


Secrets

by AkashaTheKitty



Series: Silencio [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Deception, Drama, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Secrets, Self-Medication, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:45:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 62,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkashaTheKitty/pseuds/AkashaTheKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years after Voldemort's defeat, Hermione decides to take a holiday from her life to work out who she is and what she wants to do with herself. She soon gets the feeling that Draco Malfoy might be the key to her salvation, but Draco seems to be consumed by a need to keep secrets that are destroying him and does not want her interfering. Armed with a determination to save someone who doesn't want to be saved, she sets out to see how he might fit into the oddly shaped puzzle that is her life. Sequel to Silencio.</p>
<p>Betas: <b>Dollfaced</b>, <b>MazVN</b> and <b>namelessamelie</b>. Britpick: <b>filigree1</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Banner by **Dollfaced**! 

It was eerie. Almost like déjà vu. It had been eleven years since she'd last done this. 

It seemed like a lifetime. It _had been_ a lifetime. Everything had changed so much since then. There had been a war. She had grown up.

Well, actually, it had only been nine years since she'd last done this, and the last trip had come _after_ the war, but that time everything had just been so different from how it should have been. The air had been rather subdued, and she had been so alone, so lonely without her friends accompanying her... 

On further consideration, this was actually quite a lot like nine years ago. Granted, she was the only one feeling subdued this time, but that didn't change her strong feeling of sadness and hope for a better life to come.

Hermione let out a deep sigh and looked around her at all the children getting on the train. They seemed so young; much younger than when she had been a student herself. The notion was, of course, ridiculous, but it was nevertheless hard to imagine being no older than these children whilst actively risking her life, fighting for a future. A lot of the parents, on the other hand, looked suspiciously close to her own age. If she were to look closer, she might even recognize some of them as having gone to school at the same time as her, albeit a few years above her; or, worse, some of them could have been people she had met more recently through her work at the Ministry. Maybe if she kept her head down, they wouldn't notice her, wouldn't question her presence. This was another ridiculous notion. Her name would've been in their childrens' letters, and the Board of Governors would've had to approve her for her new position, making it no secret at all that the famous Hermione Granger was now on her way to become a Hogwarts Professor.

Fortunately, her own friends and classmates weren't quite here with their own children yet, although young Teddy Lupin would be attending in only a couple of years and then, shortly after that, the Weasleys would begin pouring in.

Oh, God, the Weasleys. In a few years, they'd be swarming the place. Good thing she would be long gone by then. This position would only be hers for a year. She was simply... getting away from her life for a much needed break. It wasn't that she wasn't fond of the younger Weasleys; truly, she was. She'd been part of the celebrations for the birth of Victoire, the first of several grandchildren to Molly and Arthur, and she'd even treated the children as her own nieces and nephews, because... well... that had been how she'd seen them at the time.

But that hadn't been meant to be, and she had to deal with what was now.

What _was_ now, was a train full of children going to Hogwarts.

And she needed to be on it.

* * *

"I trust you had a pleasant journey."

Hermione smiled at the elderly headmistress. She had been whisked straight up to the comfortable, yet very formal-looking, Head's office as soon as she'd stepped inside the castle. "Quite, thank you."

Minerva McGonagall had managed to not age too much in the past decade. The greatest changes to her appearance had occurred around the time of the war. The war had changed everyone, and for Professor McGonagall it had meant extra worry-lines around her eyes, giving her a tired look, as well as a slight slump in her otherwise very straight posture. She simply wasn't as sprightly as she had used to be anymore.

"I trust that you got my missive?"

Hermione's smile faltered a bit. "Yes. I won't be able to teach Muggle Studies."

"Yes, we're terribly sorry for the inconvenience. It seemed like one of our staff was leaving, but then he changed his mind. And he is a very good teacher."

"He couldn't teach something else?" Hermione hopefully asked. She'd really set her sights on Muggle Studies. Being a Muggle-born and all, she knew she could actually teach the children things that some witch or wizard that had never had any connection to any Muggles would certainly have no clue about.

McGonagall made what looked like a small, embarrassed grimace. "I'm afraid not."

Hermione knew better than to push her luck, but she didn't put a lot of effort into hiding her disappointment either. "So, what do you have for me? You did say you still had something?"

"But of course," McGonagall said, reaching for a piece of parchment on her desk. "Our Arithmancy teacher went on maternity leave recently. She should be away for the year. She left her lesson plans behind, though, so I'm assuming that filling in for her shouldn't be too much of a problem?"

"Maternity leave?" Hermione's brain hadn't been able to process much beyond that little piece of information. "How does that work?"

The Headmistress looked a bit exasperated. "You're a clever witch; don't tell me that the concept of maternity leave boggles your mind. You're a little old not to know the inner workings of a woman's body."

Hermione flushed, seeing the rebuff for what it was. "So, not everyone is live-in, then?"

"No." McGonagall indicated the parchment. "We currently have six live-in professors, including you, as well as a teaching ghost and an anti-social centaur. The other six professors floo home from Hogsmeade at the end of their day, unless other arrangements are made in advance."

The fact that some professors might not live at school was something Hermione had never given a second thought whilst attending school herself. "Oh."

"That actually brings me to the next point on the agenda. You're currently the only live-in professor for Gryffindor."

"Oh?" That certainly sounded lonely.

"Yes, Professor Babbling has gone to live with her daughter and son-in-law and will be retiring by the end of the year, and Professor Longbottom goes home to stay with his wife."

Hermione stared for a second and then chastised herself for forgetting that Neville taught here. He'd been an Auror for a while after the war, but his greatest love had always been plants, so when the Herbology position had opened up, he'd taken it without looking back.

More importantly, though: Neville was married. He and Hannah Abbott had married during what Hermione not-so-fondly referred to as the Great Marriage Craze of '04.

No, she was not bitter. Not in the least.

"So, um... what exactly does that mean?" she asked.

"It means we have no functioning Head of House for Gryffindor," McGonagall elaborated. "Would you be interested in filling in on that score as well? It's rather unorthodox to have the Head of House teaching an elective, but I'll just have to see about a more permanent solution later on."

Hermione did a double take. "Me? As Head? I only just got here!"

"I'm aware of that. But I do know enough of your character to know that you'll do fine. It's extra hours and extra responsibility, but also extra pay. I'm assuming you're saving up for something. Young people passing through here always are."

Well, she certainly wasn't going to deny that she could use the money. "You're positive that Neville won't be interested in moving onto the school grounds instead?"

"His wife runs The Leaky Cauldron down in Diagon Alley," said McGonagall, sorting through some more parchment as she spoke. "I'm quite sure it's impossible for them to move here."

"Oh. Well... all right, then."

"Besides," McGonagall continued, "you used to have some ideas for house unity? Breaking down those walls is going to take a lot longer than either you or I have, but we could perhaps make a few chips in them while here."

Hermione nodded. House unity. Freeing the Hogwarts house-elves. It was true that she had spent years at the Ministry fighting for similar causes, but the memory of those times just made this seem all the more insignificant. There were so many things out there that were so much worse. There were people and beings being oppressed, beaten, and discriminated against. Everyone at Hogwarts was safe, clothed, fed and treated well by anyone that mattered. However, she might at least be able to nip certain behaviours in the bud. If the children were taught to connect across Houses and cliques, maybe the world would be just a little bit better off for it.

The Headmistress checked her clock. "Well, the feast is well underway by now. I simply wanted to get all of this sorted out so we could introduce you properly." She handed Hermione the parchments she'd been gathering. "Here's your lesson plans and the roster. It should say how and where you can get in contact with anyone currently filling any position here at Hogwarts. Some will also make use of the staffroom and other facilities. Should all else fail, you can come to me with any concerns you might have." She began to rise.

Hermione accepted the parchments and at first barely glanced at them, but then her eyes fell on a name and refused to budge. "Um... Professor McGonagall?"

"Please, you're not my student anymore. Call me Minerva. Or at least drop the 'Professor'."

Now there was a concept that grated. Hermione was mostly aware that she was no longer a teenager, but calling Minerva McGonagall by her first name somehow seemed wrong. She gave it a go anyway. "Uh, Minerva." No, that definitely felt wrong. "And please do call me Hermione. But... Draco Malfoy teaches here?" She looked up.

"Ah, yes." McGonagall sat back down. "I had momentarily forgotten. Will that be a problem?"

"No, of course not," Hermione rushed to assure her. "It's just... why?"

"He is much changed from the young man you once knew, Hermione."

"Of course..." Hadn't the war changed everyone? "But he's still rich, isn't he? And I doubt it's his heart's desire to teach..." She glanced down to catch his subject. "Defence Against the Dark Arts." She knew it wasn't very nice of her, but she wasn't quite able to suppress her sarcastic tone. This was the boy who had let Death Eaters and a werewolf into Hogwarts to kill innocent children, after all. The boy who had watched her be tortured by his own aunt. The boy who had stood, pale and seemingly tormented yet unapologetic and unwavering, on the other side of the great divide during the war. For years she had seen his eyes in her nightmares before awaking to her own screams. Never Voldemort's eyes or Bellatrix Lestrange's eyes or even Fenrir Greyback's eyes--always Draco Malfoy's pale, sad eyes. The fact that she'd never considered him truly evil and that he hadn't seemed to take joy in any of the real cruelty only made her more wary of him.

Some things were hard to forgive and even harder to forget--even if time would now have turned that boy into a man.

McGonagall's lips actually stretched into a sad sort of smile. "I doubt that as well, but he's more than adequate at what he does, and he's been willing to give up much more than anyone else ever has in the history of Hogwarts, in order to be allowed to work here."

"You say he's a more than adequate teacher. He's been here long?" That seemed strange, considering that Defence Against the Dark Arts had been notorious for being a one-year occupation throughout Hermione's own schooling.

"Two years," McGonagall replied. "This will be his third. The curse on his position seems to have been lifted with Voldemort's demise."

"And, um, what exactly qualifies him for that position?" Hermione asked, trying hard to keep her doubts out of her voice.

The formidable headmistress had obviously still heard, though, because she gave her a stern look just before she answered, "He's alive."

* * *

The feast and the introduction went relatively painlessly. Hermione wasn't exactly the life of the party, but she wasn't shy either, so standing up and having her life and credentials summed up in a few sentences by the Headmistress wasn't the worst thing she'd ever experienced.

Apparently, she was a great war heroine and the most intelligent witch alive. Funny how none of that was reflected in her personal history. Certainly, she had a promising career with the Ministry that she could go back to, should she wish to do so after her leave of absence was over, but there was nothing truly grand about her existence. Nothing... _sparkly_. If she were really that remarkable, there should be sparkles, shouldn't there? She should have published a book or travelled the world, delivering grand speeches to important people. She should be living in a nice cottage in a rural area and rearing her two children with a gentle but firm hand, whilst still being very much in love with her husband, and expertly managing her career on the side.

Only, she wasn't married, she didn't have any children, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd done something exciting or anything that had challenged her mind. _And_ she lived in a depressing little flat in London. Or she'd used to; her lease would be up in a couple of weeks.

She knew that it was her own fault that she had been withdrawing lately, but somehow her life just seemed wrong. As if her skin didn't fit anymore, and she should have been someone else, doing something else somewhere else.

It made no sense.

Getting away had probably been one of her better ideas. She would use this year for self-reflection and figuring out who she was and who she wanted to be, and hopefully, once she returned, she would be a brand new person.

Or she could move to Timbuktu, never to be seen again.

That was actually a pretty good plan. She had to look into that.

While deeply immersed in her thoughts about the joys of being Hermione Granger, she allowed the Headmistress to escort her to the staffroom. It was late, though, and McGonagall had some business to attend to, so soon enough Hermione was alone again. She was just about to go to her quarters to unpack and go to bed when a man entered the room. He didn't see her at first, but went straight for what seemed to be his personal space. Hermione hesitantly stood, signaling her presence.

He stopped dead in his tracks. "New teacher?" he asked.

"New teacher," she confirmed.

The man was oddly young for a teacher. Or maybe it was simply her advanced age of almost twenty-eight that made her think so. He was probably around her own age, maybe even a little older. His age really shouldn't have surprised her when Neville, Malfoy and she herself were all currently working here. The teachers had just seemed older when she had been a student, that was all. He was actually fairly attractive with dark brown hair, dark eyes and an unusually tan skintone. The only other wizard she'd ever met that didn't act as if sunlight would hurt him was Charlie Weasley and, well, he tamed dragons for a living. Teaching adolescents was a far cry from that.

Or was it?

"Darius Dorcas, Muggle Studies," he said, extending his hand with a rather charming smile. He had nice long fingers. "Just call me Darius."

"Hermione Granger, wanted Muggle Studies," she replied, taking his hand for a short, firm shake. It was warm. Why did that even surprise her? Live humans had a tendency to be warm and he certainly didn't look like another ghost. It really had been too long since she'd had actual human contact.

He grimaced. "Yeah, I heard about that. Sorry."

"Just tell me that you at least know something about your subject," she muttered, fighting off a wince at her memory of her own Muggle Studies lessons. Really, with so many Muggle-born wizards and witches--at least a few entered each year, after all--it _should_ have been possible to get better information.

Darius's face lit up. "Oh, I do! Want to see my latest project?" He motioned towards the area he had been aiming for.

Hermione followed rather cautiously and saw what appeared to be some kind of Muggle stereo. "...Music?"

"Yes!" He was rather animated. "Electronics don't work at Hogwarts, due to the high concentration of magic, but imagine the possibilities if I managed to fuse Muggle technology _with_ magic!"

Hermione stared rather blankly at him for a second. "Uh, interesting?"

"Don't mind him. He went bonkers a long time ago," said a very calm voice behind her. She turned to see the speaker and then froze in an unnatural, unconsciously guarded stance.

Draco Malfoy.

Oh, she hadn't seen him in years and he didn't look like a boy anymore, but there could be no doubt. Somehow, she didn't think that she would ever not recognize him. His hair was longer and a shade or two darker than she remembered, but it was still very distinctive, and his features were too unique to forget. His eyes had hardened, though. He hadn't been a pleasant boy in school, but it had always felt like his behaviours were all a surface. Now, his eyes were as cold and hard as slate, his whole posture was rigid, and his jaw was set in a way that made her feel like he wasn't happy to see her here. That she was intruding and he wanted her gone. That he still hated her.

It confused her. What could she possibly have done to incite such a strong reaction in a man she hadn't seen for so long? Could it be that he still hated those he did not consider pure? Was it possible that McGonagall would still allow him to teach if that were the case? No, that couldn't be it. McGonagall wouldn't express a desire to promote House unity whilst allowing a teacher to be so openly hostile towards Muggle-born witches and wizards at the same time, so whatever dislike was there had to be personal. But _why_?

"Interesting," Darius said after a few minutes of her trying to suss Malfoy out. "Do you know each other? If you don't, I promise you that he really isn't as interesting as I am."

"Anything is more interesting than your Muggle scrap metal," Malfoy replied, without even glancing at Darius. He simply narrowed his eyes at Hermione, as if trying to decide something. Then all of a sudden, he appeared to dismiss her, picking up a newspaper from the sideboard and taking a seat.

"Oh, I think Hermione could find me interesting..." Darius said, sounding very amused.

Malfoy didn't deign to answer, but just gave a disgusted snort instead. Hermione got the feeling that she wasn't really expected to respond one way or the other. In fact, the remark didn't seem to be about her at all. Maybe Malfoy simply liked to be at odds with people.

"Speaking of witches," Darius continued, "since I bowed out when you showed an interest in Carys, I figure you at least could lend me a wand with this."

"You did not bow out," Malfoy responded, not even looking up. "She was completely uninterested in you. You never had a chance."

Darius had never had a chance with something or someone? Now this might actually prove interesting... Her very first day and already there was petty intrigue!

Darius seemed completely undaunted. "I walked away, because I figured that you wouldn't stand a chance against a man who actually had _charm_. Besides, I can always use your gratitude. In fact, I'm basking in it right now." He winked at Hermione, whose eyebrows shot up. Oh, no. He wasn't including her in this in any way! She quickly averted her eyes and tried to look like she wasn't listening.

Another sigh. "If you're getting on so famously with Granger, why don't you ask for her wand-hand instead?"

Hermione narrowed her eyes, trying to follow the last bit of the exchange. "You need to borrow a wand?" she asked. "What's wrong with yours?"

Malfoy cracked his first smile and it wasn't exactly a pleasant one. In fact, it was rather maliciously gleeful. Apparently some things never changed. "You didn't tell her yet?" He put aside his reading material and looked expectantly at them. "This should prove at least vaguely interesting. Oh, go on, Dorky. The worst she's going to do is knit you something."

Hermione blinked. He remembered her knitting things? She'd all but forgotten herself. And... _Dorky?_

Darius let out a resigned breath of air, his good humour disappearing. "The reason why I'm fairly adept at Muggle Studies... is that I lived among them for almost two decades until fairly recently."

"Too convoluted," was Malfoy's verdict.

"You're a squib?" Hermione asked, frowning.

"Except apparently it wasn't," Malfoy murmured, sounding a little bit surprised, but then he seemed to shrug it off as he reopened his newspaper and tried to ignore them again.

Oh, please, what did he take her for? Why else would a wizard be unable to perform magic? He obviously wasn't a Muggle, since Hermione doubted that McGonagall was _that_ open-minded about her school, and he most definitely wasn't an adolescent Muggle-born who'd only just been called to school.

"Yeah." Darius shoved his hands in his pockets. "I understand if that makes you uncomfortable."

"Not at all!" Although it was rather unorthodox for a squib to work on equal footing with wizards and witches. Especially on equal footing with pureblood snobs like Malfoy. The aforementioned snob was snorting again, and she couldn't help but ask Darius, "Is he always this delightful?"

"Oh, no," Darius drily responded. "Sometimes he's grumpy."

"No, really?" Hermione asked in mock surprise.

"All right, then!" Malfoy abruptly closed his newspaper and stood. "Apparently there's no peace to be had around here, so I'll just leave you two to talk about me in private." He began walking towards the door.

"So what prompted you to come all the way up here to teach?" Darius asked Hermione.

"People don't simply decide to take up teaching?" she asked, uncomfortably trying to dodge the question. Some things just seemed a little personal to share with almost complete strangers.

"We all have a story," he replied. "Even Malfoy. Or maybe especially Malfoy. He's not that keen on sharing."

Malfoy stopped just as he had reached the door and put his hand on the doorknob to open it. Then his lip twisted in a disconcerting sort of way. "Want me to share things?" he silkily asked, turning back. "Fine." He took the few steps back to Darius and handed him the Daily Prophet. "Page six. Did you know that Granger's ex-fiancé is called Ronald Weasley?" Then without waiting for their reactions and sporting just a hint of a sneer, he left.

Looking rather puzzled, Darius opened the newspaper to page six and then glanced uncomfortably at Hermione. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I... didn't know."

Hermione already knew what was in the paper. There was a whole page on Ron's new engagement. When she had become engaged to him, they had only got a column. Of course, they hadn't been secretly engaged for a while before announcing it, which this journalist thought was an awfully romantic thing to do. Right. It wasn't as if Ron had hidden the engagement for even longer than anyone else knew simply to avoid gossip about his new fiancée being 'the other woman' that had stolen him away from Hermione. It didn't matter that that hadn't been what had happened at all; as late as a year ago, some people would still have interpreted it like that, and his new fiancée would have suffered the censure. 

"We split up a while ago," she said with a nonchalant shrug and a small smile. Her whole demeanour was a lie, but Darius wouldn't know. People much closer to her didn't know. It was simply fortunate that she'd had time to get used to the news and that she'd found a way to escape most pitying looks. "I'm simply glad he's happy." 

That wasn't a lie. She _was_ glad he was happy. 

She only wished she'd been happy first.

* * *

If Hermione had ever thought teaching would be easy or simple, she was soon disabused of that notion. In fact, for her very first class on her very first day, she was treated to some rather disruptive sixth years. At first, she took it all in her stride, responding to their questions about her personal life, figuring that they were simply curious about their new teacher.

Then she realised.

They were stalling, hoping that she wouldn't actually get around to making them do any schoolwork that day. And no matter what she did, there seemed to be children fidgeting as well as a constant buzz, and she wasn't completely certain exactly where it came from. Pin-pointing it was difficult, and the class was beginning to confuse and frustrate her. This was _not_ how she remembered herself or anyone else in her year--save perhaps Malfoy and his gang--acting during class.

She was rapidly approaching her wits' end when there was a knock on the door. Certain that she was already looking frazzled, she called out, "Enter!" and then watched with astonishment and an overwhelming sense of annoyance as her class immediately grew so still that you could have heard a pin drop.

How dare they look all angelic and attentive, more than likely making her seem unreasonably irate? She frowned at the class at large and then turned to the person at the door. It was Malfoy, looking every bit as distant as he had the day before. But as he entered, he didn't even look at her, at least not at first. Rather, he was looking at the students, three different individuals in particular, focusing so hard on them that he made one of them--a dark-haired girl from Ravenclaw--blush with embarrassment and sink into her chair as if to hide.

Come to think of it, most of the unruliness did seem to originate around those students.

Huh.

"The Headmistress wants you to sign this and return it to her as soon as possible," he said, handing a piece of parchment over to her and looking bored, as if he hadn't just apparently intimidated a whole classroom with a mere look. "She was supposed to have given it to you yesterday, but it would seem she forgot." His voice was dripping with sarcasm. That was interesting. But he was probably right; McGonagall had more than likely wanted someone to check in on her and had used this as a pretext.

"No problem," she muttered.

"I will see some of you in my class after this," he said to the room at large before he left, making it sound like a threat in spite of his subtle intonation.

There were no more problems with disturbances after that.

After the class finally finished, Hermione felt drained. Good thing she was teaching an elective and only had about half as many classes as someone teaching a mandatory class. Whilst teaching something mandatory would certainly pay better, she very much appreciated keeping her sanity. That was, if that were even possible.

Wearily, she got up from her seat and went down to the staffroom where she proceeded to sit down on a sofa and lean back to stare at the ceiling. She had developed a pretty good idea of how the rafters were positioned and had even thought of a few theories about the process of making them by the time someone else finally entered. She slowly lifted her head. Oh, great, Malfoy again. She had hoped for a more pronounced change of scenery.

Malfoy stopped short when he saw her, but then simply frowned and went to his own chair, again picking up a newspaper. "You're going to miss lunch," he informed her, no doubt looking to get rid of her. He was such a social being, wasn't he? But then again, if he didn't want to be around people, he could stay in his own office, so maybe he simply liked being grumpy all the time.

"Thanks," she merely said. "For helping with the little tyrants, I mean."

He frowned again, even deeper this time. "I didn't help you."

"Yeah, you did." She yawned. This had already been a long day, but she wasn't going to let Malfoy get away with denying what he'd done. "They felt threatened by you."

"They always feel threatened by me," he muttered. "Nothing to do with you."

"So, you're like Snape the Second?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. That was a rather disturbing thought. Although it didn't seem like Malfoy had given up on the habit of washing his hair yet and, well, his pouting wasn't really all that intimidating.

"No. I have nothing in common with Severus Snape," he said, looking rather annoyed with her.

"You both loathe teaching." Or so one could only assume. But this was _Malfoy_. There was no way he was actually doing this out of want, so what was his real motivation?

"I do _not_ loathe teaching!" he surprisingly growled. "Who told you these lies?"

She snorted. "Oh, come on. You're saying that you're doing it because you love children and want to expand their minds?"

"I could live quite comfortably without doing anything at all, you know," he replied. "In a nice villa on the continent with enough house-elves and scantily clad witches to see to my every need. I don't _need_ to be here."

"Then why are you?" she pressed, ignoring the rhetoric that was obviously designed to put her off. Honestly, he had to learn to do better than that.

"Because I want to be, and sadly for you, I mean to stay here. I don't want anything else."

He attempted to dismiss her by opening the newspaper he'd picked up, but he really should've known better than to think she could be that easily dissuaded once she had her heart set on something.

"I refuse to believe you don't want the scantily clad witches," she insisted.

He raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"

What _did_ make her say that? She frowned, trying to work it out. It was mostly just an... impression. Also, he was male. "Something about that conversation you had with Dorcas yesterday," she said.

He seemed to buy it. "After you've seen a few scantily clad witches, they tend to blur together a bit."

She snorted. "Now you're just showing off." She should've seen that one coming. This was Malfoy, after all. If he was still anything like his younger self, then showing off and whinging was what he did best.

Something seemed off with that assessment, and she frowned, trying to work out what that was. Then she shook it off. Obviously he'd acquired a new skill: grumping.

He shrugged. "Merely saying that they're only fun to keep around when needed. I'm quite happy to live witch-free the rest of the time."

"Right." Hermione indulged in a bit of sarcasm. "But you have _manly needs_."

He shot her the most peculiar glance. "I never said there was no such thing as womanly needs and _why_ are we having this conversation?"

Oh, so she was making him uncomfortable, was she? Well, good. Only using witches for his personal Happy Fun Times, indeed. That was annoying. She was definitely feeling annoyed. She tried to rein it in. Lecturing clueless men on their sexism never led to anything good. Pureblood wizards tended to be the worst of the lot; even Ron was rather bad on that score. Instead she forced herself to smile and say, "Because you refused to admit that you were helping me out in the classroom."

"Right." He nodded. "I wasn't."

"So, when you're talking about womanly needs--"

He abruptly stood. "The Headmistress ordered it, so stop it!"

Hermione was still laughing long after he'd gone.

* * *

The first few weeks of the school year went by relatively fast. Hermione soon learned that democracy in class did not work, and that she needed to assert herself. That really wasn't much of a problem once she got over not wanting the students to perceive her as a mean old hag. Really, being a mean old hag was so much easier. Besides, it seemed like they actually liked her _better_ once she stopped worrying about being liked. Odd.

The staffroom was generally a bit of a disappointment. Darius explained that the professors who didn't live at the castle usually only showed up at the Great Hall for the meals convenient to them, obligatory feasts, and at the staffroom for planned staff meetings, so she shouldn't be surprised if she for instance didn't really see Neville Longbottom much at all, unless she deliberately sought him out. He was, however, vague about why nobody else seemed to use the staffroom in the afternoons. All she gathered was that it somehow had to do with Malfoy. She didn't quite understand that. He was grumpy, certainly, but he wasn't _that_ bad. He generally kept to himself, even when in the middle of a group of people. He was, however, as she'd found out quite by herself, occasionally fun to bait.

"You should go to Hogsmeade if you're bored one night," Darius said one Friday afternoon, as she was reading a book in the staffroom. He was tinkering with his stereo again. Really, he just seemed to be pulling it apart. "It doesn't have very many places to go at night, so people will still know where to find you, and it's close enough that you could easily be called back for an emergency. Just don't get pissed. Minerva doesn't really like it when her staff overindulges, especially if there's no real occasion."

Go to Hogsmeade? Alone? "I don't know... " she muttered. "I'm really quite fine here."

"Then we could go together."

Hermione glanced at him, feeling a bit wary. All signs pointed towards Darius wanting to become a bit friendlier than she was ready for. Especially with someone she had to work with. Relationships didn't tend to end so well for her. Imagine if he then ran off with Madam Vera, the young matron that had taken Madam Pomfrey's place at some point in the last few years, or imagine if her own shortcomings would eventually push him away. She definitely wasn't prepared to face that. She'd come here, hoping to have a whole year where she wouldn't even have to consider going out with someone, so his attention made her feel a little bit awkward. 

She was overthinking the matter. Best to simply reply. He might not even mean anything by it. "Er... " she said.

There was a brief look of disappointment on his face, but it was gone so quickly that Hermione wasn't certain it had ever really been there. Then he shot her a bright smile. "Nah, maybe not such a great idea. They don't take too kindly to squibs down at the Three Broomsticks, and the Hog's Head is nowhere to take a decent witch. Maybe some other time, some other place, yeah?"

She felt bad for rejecting him like that. He'd actually been very nice to her ever since she started, and it wasn't even because she was completely uninterested. She liked him very much and _maybe_ once they didn't have to work so closely together, she could encourage him to owl her. Just not quite yet. Things needed to fall into place, and she needed her safe space.

"That's just wrong," she heard herself say. "You should be able to go wherever you please." As soon as she realised what she'd said, she felt a little stupid. Of course he should be able to go wherever he pleased. She wouldn't be getting arguments from him there. It hadn't been his idea to make wizarding society so inherently bigoted against anyone and anything that wasn't exactly as they'd prescribed. She simply didn't know what else to say.

"I didn't say I wasn't _able_ to go," he clarified, his smile beginning to look a little strained. "I said I wasn't particularly _welcome_. I did go for a while, but... " He shrugged again. "I don't really have a reason to anymore."

"What was your reason before?"

He hesitated a bit. "A pretty young witch."

"What happened?" Hermione had always been too curious for her own good. If she had to guess without knowing the story, she'd bet this was the same witch Darius had mentioned to Malfoy on the first day.

Darius's hands stopped fiddling with his Muggle electronics and he stared at them for a second. "She wasn't interested in seeing a squib," he finally said. "Nobody really is, you see. They'll be all smiles and flirting until they realise, and then they'll be awkward and can't seem to get away fast enough. We're the ones that don't belong, the ones that don't qualify for anything. They think we should either go and live with Muggles or hide away working miserable jobs, like old Filch is doing. We shouldn't presume." He began tinkering again. "We shouldn't _want_."

Hermione was quite speechless. "You know that's not why--"

"I know." He didn't look up at her. "You're a very decent sort. But it still plays a small part, doesn't it? Even if you're Muggle-born. Even if you believe in equality."

"Certainly not!"

"You're completely sure about that?"

She blushed with embarrassment and anger. It seemed too much like he was calling her a bigot. _Her_ , of all people! "What are you trying to say?"

He opened his mouth, but then sighed and shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Have I somehow offended you?"

He looked startled. "Of course not."

"Then why are you saying I'd discriminate against you?"

"Maybe because I want you to prove me wrong."

He looked her straight in the eyes for the longest time, but finally Hermione had to look away. She couldn't deal with this kind of thing just now. "I think I might go down to Hogsmeade after all," she said, getting up.

Perhaps walking off without inviting Darius along wasn't the nicest thing Hermione had ever done, but he'd hit a sore spot with her. She was Muggle-born, yet at this point in her life she didn't really have anything to do with anyone not magical. She had wanted to make her parents proud, and she supposed she had, but she had lost any deeper connection with them before she was even a teen. Today, they were little more than polite strangers. Certainly, there was still love and pride, but they simply had nothing to talk about.

This seemed to be the story of all of her old relationships lately.

* * *

Hermione stood in the doorway of the Three Broomsticks, clutching her book to her chest. Why she'd even brought a book to the pub, she wasn't sure, but right now it was good for holding onto.

There were _so many_ people. And they were all laughing and talking quite loudly. Many of them had definitely had their fair share of drink.

She quickly stepped aside as someone stumbled to get past her, but he still managed to bump into her.

She shrunk into herself.

Hermione was not a shy person, and she had certainly not been a wallflower at any time in her life. It was just... she'd had a distaste for going out ever since her world had crumbled. She'd had a distaste for meeting new people.

She'd had a distaste for opening up to new people.

Oh, she knew that Ron had never meant to hurt her. He hadn't even been the one to do the leaving, and she knew for a fact that he too had been broken for a long time.

Knowing that simply didn't make it any less lonely and intimidating to be _her_ , trying to fight her way past a natural inclination to shut off and shut down.

However, Ron had moved on and so would she. Just as soon as she was finished hiding in the Scottish Highlands.

Pathetic.

Well, whilst she was hiding up here, she might as well socialise with the locals. She took a deep breath and entered the room, making her way around the edges until she found a small table in the corner where she could sit down. So far, so good.

She opened her book to claim her spot, but before she could get back up to order, a young blonde witch who obviously worked there had approached her table. "Can I get you anything, love?"

"Um... Butterbeer, please," Hermione muttered, a bit flustered at being approached. She hadn't thought there'd be table service and had simply ordered the first thing that had come to mind. Regardless, one butterbeer wasn't likely to get her smashed, even if she did have the constitution of a house-elf. The witch nodded, went away, came back with the drink, and then left her alone after accepting payment. Hermione liked that service; she would have to tip the barmaid before she went back.

Although she did suspect that the majority of the witch's tips didn't come from her no-nonsense service, but rather from her low-cut robes. Not that Hermione was a prude that minded low-cut robes. In fact, she felt that wearing them was probably a very good marketing strategy for the witch, and she applauded that. 

She wondered if this was the pretty witch Darius had been talking about. She _was_ pretty, that much was for certain. And she was working at the Three Broomsticks. It was none of her business, though. Hermione returned to her book, to her surprise actually liking the activity and noise around her. It reminded her a little of so many visits to the Burrow, where during the holidays she'd sat in a corner of the living room whilst all the countless children and grandchildren--well, they had seemed countless at the time--had been making merry around her.

She hadn't been to the Burrow since the end of her relationship. Molly had actually invited her for Christmas last year, before she had known that Ron had become re-engaged, obviously, but Hermione had declined. It would have been too awkward, even if Molly had assured her that she was still a part of the family. Because the fact of the matter was that she wasn't. Harry was a part of the family; Hermione was not.

This was becoming depressing fast. All of these people made Hermione realise exactly how alone she'd become. Maybe she should simply go.

As she got up, she saw that Malfoy had arrived as well, and he was talking to the blonde barmaid, who now had her back turned to Hermione.

Something seemed to shift. Hermione blinked and frowned. It was an odd feeling, almost like déjà vu, but not quite. It was like... she was struggling to remember something. She spent a few seconds trying to work it out, but nothing came to her and eventually she gave up. It was probably nothing important anyway.

Still, when she looked at the couple again, her world seemed to shift once more.

_What's going on?_

She frowned. This was not good. Had the butterbeer been off or something?

When she looked a third time, Malfoy looked up to meet her eyes and something just snapped inside her head. Her body went completely limp as if the threads holding her up had been severed.

As she fell, she saw it. There it was. Almost within her grasp. She blindly reached for it and caught something vague, something intangible. Draco Malfoy. A blonde witch. A name. " _Marilyn_ ," she breathed the second before everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me quite a while longer than I thought it would to get this chapter out. I have poor mental and physical health and sometimes it acts up, not helped any by stress. ;) Additionally, one of my betas has fallen off the map for now. Sometimes that can happen what with RL being a nasty beast, but I hope she will forgive me for posting this without her input. This of course also means that any grammatical errors are even more my own than usual. ;)

Draco felt a prickling on his skin and looked up to see a pair of wide brown eyes looking at him almost accusingly before suddenly they rolled back in their owner's head and Hermione Granger collapsed.

At first he didn't react, he just stared, but then Carys followed his gaze and with a shriek, she ran to the unconscious form and knelt. "What happened?" she demanded of him whilst she carefully felt Granger's forehead.

"How should I know?" he retorted, shoving his hands in his pockets because they somehow didn't seem to want to unclench. He had a hard time relaxing around Granger as it was, and to have this happen was... _annoying_. "I just looked at her and she passed out. It doesn't happen all that often, you know." He hadn't even known she'd be here. He did his best to avoid her at all times, sometimes simply resorting to sit around in his office or his private rooms. Of course she would be there to ruin it on the one night he was finally looking for some diversion again. Why wouldn't she be? It would all be too easy if she weren't.

"It couldn't be the drink," Carys muttered. "I'm certain I only brought her one and she didn't even finish it."

"Maybe she'd had a head start?" Draco suggested. Yeah, swotty goody-goody Hermione Granger hitting the drink. That was bloody likely. But then again... they all had their demons, didn't they?

Carys shook her head, dismissing the idea as well. "No, not this one. She was sober and not looking to drink. Just looking to not be completely alone as she read her book, I suspect. That's why I brought the drink to her, so she wouldn't need to work through the crowd."

Draco's jaw clenched right along with his fists, and he looked away from the witches on the floor, scowling at a few goggling patrons. Everyone was looking to not be alone. Big fucking deal. "Well, something has to be done," was what he said out loud. Rather state the obvious than have Carys become cross with him for his lack of compassion. He wasn't in the mood to have Carys become cross with him tonight.

"You're right." Carys carefully stroked Granger's cheek and then got up, wiping her hands on her robes. "She's the new teacher, isn't she? We could bring her to a room here, but I think she'll be more comfortable in her own bed, and there's a nurse right handy up there. Someone will have to bring her back to the castle."

Now there was a plan. Get the bushy-haired ghost away from there so other people--himself, in particular--could resume their evening. "Who?" he blithely asked.

"You, that's who!"

" _Me?_ " There was no way in hell! He couldn't stand even looking at Granger, and now Carys would have him _carry_ her back to Hogwarts? "I'm not a Healer," he objected, "and I had other plans for tonight." As Carys very well knew since she rather _was_ his plans. 

She gave him one of those _looks_ that he tended to associate with females. "Consider those plans cancelled."

He tamped down the urge to groan. "You're really not very good at bribing me to do this."

She rested her hands on her hips and glared at him. "And I'd be more of a mind to reward you if you weren't being such a git about it!"

Granger moved her head to the side and softly moaned. If he were lucky, she would come to and be fine, and they could all forget this nonsense. She'd probably merely forgotten to eat or some such other vain female idiocy.

Yeah, because Granger was the type for that. What was he even thinking? She was far too practical to pass out from hunger.

Carys frowned. "Who's Marilyn?"

Draco blinked and then stared at her. "You heard her _say_ something?"

"Please. I take orders from drunks in this ruckus all the time. So, who's Marilyn?"

He shrugged. The familiarity of the name was really uncomfortable but it _couldn't_ be the Marilyn he remembered. Granger didn't remember anything that had happened between them years ago, least of all the small part Marilyn Shaw had played; he was one hundred percent sure of that. He'd watched for signs that she might remember something every time he'd been forced to be around her these past few weeks, but she was... blank. There was nothing there. He couldn't quite decide if that relieved or agitated him. On the one hand, he was so very tired of keeping so many secrets and making sure that others kept them as well, but on the other hand, she could never remember. At this point, the knowledge could do nothing but destroy. Her mind could shatter from having to adapt to such a large shift of her reality, and his world would narrow quite a bit until it only contained the inside of the walls of Azkaban. It could never be worth it.

When Carys kept staring expectantly at him, he dismissed his own fears as paranoia and merely said, "I don't know. Maybe a friend of hers?"

"Her girlfriend, maybe?" Carys knelt again. "We do have to get her off this cold floor whether you like it or not, Draco."

He wrinkled his nose. "Don't be absurd."

Carys shot him another _look_. "It's absurd to get her off the floor?"

"No, the other bit. I, uh, knew her ex-fiancé. Talk about being a git. Sometimes I've had my doubts whether he had the intelligence to qualify for the title of human being, but he was male."

"And _ex_ could be the operative word here. People change and they discover who they are." She carefully felt Granger's forehead. "Sometimes, they aren't who you think they are, at all. Sometimes, they even surprise themselves." Carys had completely ignored Draco's digs at Ronald Weasley, which made them far less satisfying. But then, she didn't know the wizard, so why had Draco even bothered? Old habits died hard, it seemed.

"Right. You have anything you want to tell me, then?" It was more of a distraction than a legitimate question. She was projecting far too much of herself onto this boring little miss that Granger had become, and seeming far too interested in what she saw. Carys was a rather... giving... person and not one to accept any limitations society might want to impose upon her. He liked that about her. It meant that when he wasn't in the mood for a girlfriend, she had at least one other lover to entertain her. Everybody won. The only problem was the way she was looking at _Granger_. He really didn't want to share his girlfriend with his... well, ex-girlfriend, he supposed. Talk about awkward. For him.

"Oh, I believe you know everything you need to know about _me_ ," Carys sharply said, "but what you seem _not_ to know is that if you don't get this witch home before she gets pneumonia from lying on my floor, you can forget about me being available for your pleasure for a good long while!"

"I'd actually already worked that out," he muttered and then sighed.

He just really, really didn't like being around Granger. He had been prepared for the unpleasantness when he'd learned she was coming to Hogwarts. He'd actually been almost surprised at how, the first time he'd seen her, he'd felt absolutely nothing but the predictable resentment that she couldn't stay out of his life. But he feared that if pushed too far tonight, he might actually explode. Or vomit. It was a feeling he could have lived without, but unfortunately it wasn't anything new. Already before Granger had decided to upset his life, Draco had been straining against his own mental limits quite often. Now, her very presence in the same bloody castle as him seemed to drain him to a degree where those limits were always staring him in the face.

It had been a long time since he'd seen her before she'd moved here. A _long_ time. After the war, he had opted not to redo his seventh year because she had been redoing hers. After that, when she'd got a job at the Ministry, he'd opted to avoid any and all functions she might possibly go to, and he'd completely avoided the building itself. Merlin, even that one time he'd been in trouble with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for some minor offence, he'd doled out considerable bribes simply to keep her off the case.

He simply hadn't been able to keep her from coming here. He'd actually tried as hard as he could without revealing himself. He'd had her superiors offering her promotions, and he'd had a few other job offers that she should have found interesting thrown at her--his family still had some influence, after all--but she'd stayed determined. Then, when it had been clear that she was decided, he'd swallowed his bitter disappointment at once again having had his life turned over by her, and had offered the Headmistress his own resignation. She had refused to accept it. After a heated debate about whether or not he could break his contract before it ran out--she had _much_ stricter contracts drawn than Dumbledore had had in his day--she'd finally resorted to blackmail to keep him in his position until at least the end of this year. If he left, she'd said, then she would write a book based on the memories of his part in the war that they had wrangled from him in exchange for allowing him to work at Hogwarts. A damn _book_. Where was the confidentiality in that? They'd only been given access to those memories in order to definitively prove that he wasn't evil and wouldn't abuse his position. It hadn't even been something he'd wanted to do. It had been either doing that and come live and work here as part of his recovery plan, or stand before the Wizengamot and face full public scandal and censure.

And now he actually quite liked it here, which was of course why the fates had thrown Granger at him.

Fortunately, there was one part of his memories even they didn't have access to. He'd been able to remain vague about a lot of what had come before the actual war and had thereby preserved his biggest secret and heaviest burden even as they plied him with potions and poked around in his mind. That part was making him angry and nauseated whenever he thought about it, even though any other emotions tied to it had been long since buried and all but forgotten. It was the part where he had been secretly seeing Hermione Granger for months, only to ultimately abuse her trust and violate her mind to make her forget about their time together. He'd done it in the name of keeping her safe, but to be honest, he'd always been glad he'd done it. And once he'd come to his senses, he'd never had any inclination to reverse it.

He merely didn't want to have to be near her. And he felt that he'd come to understand exactly why that was: he still very much feared being revealed and he _hated_ her. He hated her for forcing that secret on him. He hated her for not allowing him to be as blissfully unaware as she was. He hated her for all the times over the years where he had been paralysed with fear that this time they would find him out. He hated her for not marrying her beloved Ron Weasley after the war and being bloody happy. He hated her for coming here and disturbing his peace. 

It wasn't rational. If put on the spot, he didn't think he could explain coherently exactly why he resented her so much for these things. Perhaps it was because of the time she represented; a time he himself would have loved to be allowed to forget in its entirety. A time filled with nothing but gut-wrenching fear and desperation. A time where every day he'd died a little inside, whilst desperately trying to figure out what kind of atrocities he'd have to perform in order to save his parents. In order to save himself. In order to save _her_. He hadn't done very well saving her. She'd still had to endure all kinds of hardships, some of which he'd even had to witness. But she'd had her Potter and her Weasley, and ultimately she was alive, so he'd always chosen to count it as a victory. He had so preciously few of those.

He didn't honestly mind continuing to protect them both from her finding out the truth for the rest of his life, but why did she have to be _here_?

"Look, she's coming to!" Carys said, interrupting Draco's train of thoughts.

He looked down on the petite witch that he was wasting all of this anger on, as she slowly began stirring. It was really quite ridiculous that she should do such a number on his self-control by merely existing, so he resolved to try not to let her get to him. What was in the past was in the past, right? She didn't even _remember_ , so holding her responsible was really rather pointless. Hating her was merely a waste of energy. Maybe if he told himself all of this often enough, eventually that burning need to yell at her, strangle her, forcibly remove her from his life so he could feel at ease again, would disappear.

"Are you all right?" Carys was asking Granger, as Granger was struggling to sit up.

"I... think so," Granger said, rubbing her head, freeing more hair from that loose bun she had tried to tame it with, making it into an even more disastrous mess.

Carys carefully helped Granger to her feet, whilst Draco merely stood by, silently watching. He didn't have the most helpful nature to begin with, and Granger had already used up her quota a long time ago. In fact, she'd pretty much used up everyone else's quota as well.

"What happened?" Carys asked, carefully dusting off Granger's robes. To her credit, she didn't even seem to try and cop a feel. But then again, for someone as advanced in her sexual tastes and habits as Carys, she was rather nurturing even towards complete strangers. That was a rarity in Draco's experience, and one of the reasons why Carys intrigued him. He'd quite possibly found the only truly _good_ woman, who could deal with his general lack of commitment.

"I don't know," Granger muttered. "I saw... " She turned towards Draco and stopped as she noticed him, apparently remembering what she saw. "Him... " she confirmed, loosely pointing at him. "And then... then I felt odd, and I suppose I fainted." She frowned at Carys. "Hey, you remind me of someone."

"Marilyn?" Carys guessed, making Draco curse inwardly. If the whole Marilyn thing and Granger passing out was connected, then it was definitely _not_ a good sign that both the Marilyn of their school days and Carys were pretty, busty, straight-forward blondes, and that it had happened whilst _he_ had been speaking to Carys. What were the odds of such a coincidence, anyway? He didn't even have a type; his current lover could have had any kind of look. Except that he seemed to have an aversion to bookish types with wild hair, of course, but that was beside the point.

"Who?" Granger asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

For a second Carys looked stumped, but then she simply smiled and stroked Granger's cheek once more. "Never mind, pet. But you'd best go and see your nurse up at the castle. You know, make sure you're taken care of if you're ill or pregnant."

Granger burst out laughing but quickly checked herself. "I'm sorry," she said with a small grimace. "Fairly certain I'm not pregnant, though."

Carys gave Granger a friendly smile. "You never know. The spells and potions can fail. Sometimes the brewer is just not good enough, or you cast the spell too eagerly or--"

"I think she meant she hasn't engaged in any baby-making activities," Draco offered, somewhat amused that the thought didn't even seem to occur to Carys--especially after Carys's theory that Granger might like witches now.

His amusement rose as Carys immediately looked embarrassed and confused and just uttered a small, "Ah."

And it certainly didn't detract from it that Granger seemed to rediscover his presence and went completely red. Yet he was hardly surprised that she didn't know how to have any fun. She had never known. Well, except for that one very brief moment in time where she had actually loosened up a little. Too bad she hadn't developed those skills better. For her own sake. Maybe then she could've held on to her fiancé and not come bother Draco in his nice little bubble up here.

"In any case," Carys said, her slight embarrassment gone, "Draco here will walk you safely back."

"Wait, _Draco Malfoy?_ " Granger asked, as if it weren't glaringly obvious who Carys had meant. "You positive that he isn't planning to drown me in a ditch or something?"

He ignored her. "Will you be awake if I make it back?" he asked Carys, really more interested in whether or not he would be getting some long-needed release tonight than whether Granger would be passing out again.

Carys held up her hand for him to wait whilst she frowned at Granger. "Drown you in a ditch? Why would he do that?"

Apart from all the obvious reasons?

"Last I checked, he hated anyone that wasn't a pure-blood," Granger said, eyeing him suspiciously, a calculating quality to her look that gave Draco pause. No, she _wouldn't_ be telling his girlfriend these things simply to gauge where he stood on blood matters these days, would she? "Especially me, because I wasn't as he thought a Muggle-born should be." Her eyes flickered between Carys and Draco to measure their reactions. Apparently, she would. And she couldn't even be subtle about it, either.

Carys's frown deepened. "I'm half-blood, for the record, not that it's anyone's business. And how should you be?"

"You have to forgive Granger," Draco cut in before Granger could talk his girlfriend into breaking it off with him, leaving him without _any_ fun in the foreseeable future. "She's still living in the nineties where I was a schoolboy, taking my father's teachings to heart. If I don't particularly care for her, it has nothing to do with her blood status." The last was said with a warning glance in her direction.

"Hmh." Carys watched Granger thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Well, I suppose it's quite a lot to ask you to trust him, but maybe you can trust me? I trust him not to kill you. At least not tonight."

Draco smirked at that. But he was rapidly getting sick of this conversation. "Come on, Granger," he irritably said, moving towards the door. "If I'm going to kill you, I promise you it'll be when I'm not the most likely suspect. I'd probably murder you in your bed. Or, better yet, poison your tea!"

"Be nice!" Carys called.

Draco made a dismissive hand wave at her and Granger reluctantly followed him. But seeing as he'd never got Carys to respond to whether she would be up later or not, there was really no point in him going back. Damn it! He could have used the stress relief. What he got instead was the privilege of having to babysit his least favourite person in the world.

He really was cursed.

* * *

"So... that's your girlfriend, then?" Granger asked, breaking what Draco had felt was a very agreeable silence. Especially when combined with the fact that Granger was walking at least nine feet off to the side of him. He could almost imagine she wasn't there as long as she didn't speak.

No matter how he tried to look at it, there wasn't any way he could make himself feel comfortable talking to her. All it would take was the tiniest slip, and he risked her over-active brains would connect some dots other people didn't see and she'd _know_. It brought him out in a cold sweat just to think about it.

Still, she'd asked a question and, so, he'd better reply. "Yeah... " he muttered.

"Oh, good," she said, her voice slightly muffled from the cloak she had wrapped tightly around herself. "I thought... well, for a second I thought that she might... never mind."

Draco glanced at her, at first slightly confused and annoyed that she didn't just make her point, but then something clicked and he slowly smirked. Wouldn't this be something for the prissy, sheltered school madam to take in. "Oh, she might."

Granger's eyes widened and then narrowed. "You're just lying to make me feel uncomfortable. It's not working. She's very pretty, isn't she? I'd be flattered."

"She was interested in you," Draco bluntly said. "Flirting, even. If there were no objections from anyone involved, she'd get together with you in a heartbeat."

Granger's eyes widened again and her step faltered. "What... you mean like a threesome?"

"Not with me, no." He adamantly shook his head. He never wanted to touch Hermione Granger again. _Ever_. The very thought was enough to almost bring that suffocating feeling he sometimes had of complete and utter hopeless fear and panic to the front again, so he ruthlessly killed the thought and concentrated on his breathing as he continued, "Other than that, you'd have to ask her how she'd want you." Now there was a mental image he probably shouldn't delve into either, although it at least didn't bring out the panic.

"And you're ok with that?" Granger incredulously asked.

"Not at all," Draco said, not seeing any reason to withhold the truth on this one. "And you should take that personally, since I usually am."

That should have shut Granger up but naturally it didn't. "So, _generally_ , you're fine with your girlfriend openly wanting someone else in front of you?"

That was sort of personal, wasn't it? "I would thank you not to impose your ideas of how a relationship should work on me," he very stiffly said. Monogamy wasn't everybody's ideal, but trust someone like Granger not to understand that.

"I'm not imposing," she objected. "I'm just... curious. I thought I read a few years back that you had become engaged to some rich witch, and if I had thought about it, I would have assumed that you would have married her and had children by now. Instead you're _here_ , teaching, and have this unusual arrangement with some barmaid at the--"

He swiftly got in her path, cutting up her speech in the process as she warily looked up at him. Good. She should be wary of him. Tonight, he wasn't above hurting her, making her suffer. Making her _pay_. "It's none of your business," he coldly said.

Her eyes softened a little bit. "I know we aren't friends," she quietly said. "But we should at least make an effort to get along. Maybe if we got to _know_ each other a little better, eliminating the views we had of each other as kids... "

Draco felt a tic just below his right eye, as the headache and the nausea began setting in. She was looking up at him with those damn big, brown eyes of hers again, and all he wanted to do was introduce pain to her world.

A brief flash entered his mind, a memory he'd almost managed to suppress. Those eyes, filled with tears, begging him to let her remember. Begging him not to erase what they'd had.

So what? She'd known pain, but only for a minute. He'd suffered the repercussions much longer than that. The endless fear that if he had even one unguarded moment, the Dark Lord would look into his mind, and he'd see everything. Even after the war had ended and that monster was dead, he hadn't been able to relax. All it took was eye contact with one wrong person, one drop of Veritaserum, one slip of the tongue... She'd never know any of the lengths he'd gone to in order to protect her, even after they'd both moved on, and he _hated_ her for it.

"She cheated on me," he heard himself tonelessly say. "My fiancée. We had no arrangements allowing for sexual relationships with other people, so the trust was broken. I wasn't going to marry her after that."

New memories flooded his mind. Memories of tears, shouting, accusations. He'd done his best, and it still hadn't been good enough. He'd been broken since the war, his fiancée had said, sobbing. Unable to truly care, let alone love, she'd claimed. It hadn't been true. He'd loved her. He'd wanted to make a family with her. He had done everything he possibly could to show her his devotion and how he'd been looking forward to sharing his life with her. And she'd said he treated her as if she was some animal he would like to breed. She had accused him of caring more about her pedigree than about her person. Then she'd said he wouldn't be able to love a child either, that he would warp it into a cold, unfeeling beast like himself. That he would make a terrible father and she was only marrying him because her parents were forcing her to go through with it.

So he'd ended the farce and made sure her parents didn't punish her by painting himself as even more of a beast than she'd accused him of being. He simply hadn't cared what people thought of him any longer. So he'd slept around, fallen down drunk in public places, and had even experimented with some highly illegal potions and powders, ending up in some very discreet facilities at his parents' expense, and then ultimately here. Taking care of other people's children, ironically. Last he'd heard, his ex-fiancée was living with her lover somewhere on the Mainland. Possibly they were married now. There might even be children that weren't cold, unfeeling beasts.

She'd been right about him in some ways, though. Monogamy was not for him. Marriage was not for him. Children he actually had to care about were not for him. How could he have any of that? He'd lied, cheated, stolen, manipulated and used spells and potions that no decent person should even know in order to keep his secret. The ironic thing was that what he'd worked so hard to keep hidden was now meaningless in itself. So what if he'd had sex with some girl when he'd been sixteen? Who cared about a few poor choices, really? He'd been a child forced to fight in his father's war. But now, because of everything he'd done to protect that secret, he had no choice but to continue protecting it. Forever.

Everybody knew that there was something he wasn't telling them. Everyone. It had become such a large part of who he was that it was now impossible for him to imagine a life where he didn't jealously guard and protect memories that now felt like they were from another lifetime. What witch could possibly want to build a life with him and still accept that he would never confide in her? That he would never confide in anyone, not even his Healers? His parents had been dogging him to give another of their very eligible witches a try now that they considered him as cured as he could be, but what was the point? He refused to marry purely out of some sense of duty to his family name. He did not feel that sense of duty. He hadn't felt it since his father's dedication to keeping the wizarding world pure and untainted had ruined Draco's life.

Two years with the intense stress of constant death threats would ruin anyone's life, but everything both Granger and his father had forced on him were the gifts that simply kept on giving.

"I'm sorry," Granger offered. He knew she was referring to the loss of his fiancée, but the timing was impeccable and only angered him further.

"I don't care," he coldly replied.

"You know, it's odd," Granger said, frowning slightly and seemingly ignoring his dismissal. "I have this... feeling... "

Draco's lips curled into a mocking leer. "I'm sorry. It's not reciprocated."

She scoffed at him. "Don't be stupid. No, it's a feeling that I... that I _know_ you better than anyone thinks. It's quite silly, and I have no idea where it comes from, but it started just now before I fainted and... I don't actually dislike you... exactly." Her frown deepened. "Although I do feel some rather irrational anger towards you. Do you have any idea what that could mean?"

Her words only slowly sunk in as his brain refused to accept their meaning, but when they did it was as if an ice-cold hand grabbed hold of his chest and wouldn't let go, wouldn't let him breathe.

His nightmares were coming true.

* * *

"Are you all right?" The words seemed to come from far away.

_Focus. It could be nothing. And even if it's something, it can still be fixed._

"Yeah, I'm fine." Draco's own voice seemed hollow. "I suppose I'm tired." He resumed walking without bothering to check if she was going to follow. They were almost there. Now how to get her to accept the potion that would make sure she wouldn't remember anything important? He'd always felt a little insane for keeping an extra phial of this particular liquid around for the past decade, but now he was very glad. The annual ritual of re-brewing it suddenly didn't seem so stupid, since brewing it on the spot would have taken too long. He needed to make certain that she didn't begin to remember. Tonight.

"Ow, my head hurts," she suddenly whinged, burying one hand in her hair to cup where the pain was coming from.

"Headache?" he quickly said. "I have potions for that in my quarters. Come along, and I'll give them to you."

He knew he had overdone it even before he caught Granger's suspicious look. She knew he wanted her as far from his personal space as humanly possible, so of course this would make her cautious. "Why?" she asked.

He merely shrugged, trying hard to seem unaffected in spite of feeling positively clammy. "I was just being polite. And I thought you wanted us to be friends."

Granger snorted without much force behind it.

"Forget it," he said. "Enjoy your headache." He would have to find another way to get her to drink it. He couldn't conceal it in her usual beverages, because she needed to drink it all at once, so whatever he came up with had to be _good_.

Granger stumbled and then drew her cloak even tighter around herself. Were her teeth clattering?

"You're clearly not well," he said by way of observation. She shouldn't be freezing and stumbling--it wasn't really that cold and the moon was bright. Something was wrong. Could her memories really trigger like this? God, he hoped not.

"I realise that, thank you!" she bit back. "I think I may have a fever. Maybe that's why my head is so... confused."

Draco swallowed, but the motion hurt, because his mouth had gone completely dry. _Think, man, think!_

"You know what?" Granger murmured, her voice slightly slurred. "I actually _do_ want a potion. I'm... a bit off. Your quarters are on the sixth floor same as my new one, right? A little closer than the hospital wing." She sniggered. "Madam Vera is pretty, maybe you can talk her into rewarding you for helping a soul in need."

Yes! She had willingly placed herself in a position where he had a fairly good chance of getting her to drink the potion that would once again suppress her memories, hopefully this time for good, and make his nightmare go away. "I'd get quite the beating if I attempted that," he absent-mindedly said. Vera was a very good friend of his, at least sometimes he thought so, but she wasn't about to suffer any man trying to get into her knickers.

"I thought you were just doing whatever or whoever you wanted. Oh, how you disappoint me." Granger sighed. "You were lying about that, weren't you?"

Draco had a hard time figuring out what was doing the talking just now. Was it the few sips of butterbeer she'd had, the resurfacing memories, the fever that may or may not be there, or simply an overly tired Granger? "I wasn't lying," he replied to her accusation, without bothering to correct her misunderstanding of who would do the beating. It was none of her business that he didn't sleep around even if he could, and that Carys preferred multiple relationships. After a few years of testing exactly how addicted to sex he was, Draco had finally figured that as long as it came in a somewhat steady supply, he didn't need overly much of it. Carys served his needs well enough on her own. He didn't need anyone else. She, on the other hand, was getting everything he couldn't give her from someone else. It was the perfect relationship for someone like him.

"I suppose she _was_ flirting with me," Granger said.

"Yes. It appears she's in the market for someone new. Or maybe she simply likes fainting brunettes."

Granger shook her head and muttered, "Wow."

"Never mind her, Granger," Draco said. "You won't be testing your curiosity on her in the near future, since she wouldn't be with anyone I disapprove of."

"I wasn't going to--" 

He snorted. He actually didn't believe she had been considering it, but this might prove just the thing to distract her from remembering anything.

Granger scowled. "And what's with all the disapproval?" she asked.

Draco sighed for effect. "I simply don't like you." At least that much was true. "And does my approval even matter if you weren't considering it?"

She blushed a little bit. "No, of course not," she muttered. "But it does make me wonder..."

"What?"

"Why do you feel the need to constantly tell me you don't like me?"

He found himself becoming unsettled. "I--what? I don't feel a _need_ \--"

"Then why have you already told me, what, three or four times tonight?"

"Maybe because I really don't?"

She snorted at him. "Right. If I didn't know any better, Malfoy, I'd almost think you were scared of me."

Well, shit. She really was far too observant. "Don't be ridiculous..." he muttered, unwilling to argue the point. Arguments tended to bring out truths. He couldn't afford that. He couldn't afford any of this.

She shivered again and looked so miserable that Draco _almost_ considered offering her his cloak. If he did, he could use it later to score points with Carys. He didn't like Granger touching his things, though.

"Why are you teaching?" Granger asked, sounding almost drowsy.

"Didn't we have this conversation before?" And why was she being so damn chatty?

"I simply don't understand. You never struck me as the nurturing kind."

"I hate to say it, Granger, but neither did you."

"I'm not. I'm hiding."

Draco did a double-take. That was a little too honest for his comfort. "Aren't there better places to hide? Personally, I'd hide on a tropical island somewhere... "

She made a little grunt that he _supposed_ was meant to be another snort. "No, you wouldn't. You'd hide here as well."

"Look who thinks she knows things," Draco muttered.

"I do know things. You're hiding."

Draco's heart skipped a beat and his throat was constricting as he once again had to battle the growing panic. Why wouldn't she stop analysing him? "From whom?" he asked as carelessly as he could.

"I don't know... " Granger screwed up her face, apparently giving this matter great thought. "Maybe your ex-fiancée?"

He relaxed somewhat. "No, that would be you doing that." Good one! Only, he didn't feel quite as triumphant as he normally would. He didn't want her to know about his life; he didn't want her to _care_.

"Right. Well, I'm sure that with your winning personality there are several people that would fit the bill," she drily stated.

"Charming."

"Why, thank you!"

His only reply to that was a disgruntled sound, and they walked the rest of the way in blessed silence.

* * *

Granger was still firmly clutching her cloak closed as she entered Draco's office and upon closer--not too close, mind you--inspection, Draco realised that her teeth were clattering.

He wasn't sure what to do.

First, however, he pushed the hidden door to his private rooms open and fetched her a blanket. He didn't need for her to die from pneumonia in a way that made him culpable.

But then what?

Given some of her symptoms, he was genuinely terrified to turn her over to Madam Vera. If they realised Granger's memories had been tampered with and they restored them... then _everything_ would be for nothing. He didn't want to go to Azkaban, and she didn't need to remember that her first time had been with _him_ on some desk in this castle, and that he'd threatened her to keep quiet afterwards. She didn't need to remember that whilst he'd been planning the invasion of the castle and ultimately Dumbledore's death, they'd been having an affair and she'd naïvely fallen for him. She really didn't need to remember that he'd betrayed and rejected her in the most final of ways, wiping her memories clean of everything they'd had, leaving tiny little cracks in her mind that could so easily crumble into gaping holes if tampered with again.

If he kept it a secret, then not only could he remain free, but she stood a better chance of one day being happy. Even disregarding the threat to her sanity, she wouldn't be torn up and broken inside from remembering exactly how horrible the war had been. Remembering that she'd been in love with someone who'd refused to change his ways, and who had less than a year later silently looked on as his aunt had tortured her. What did it matter how it had felt to him that he'd had to remain passive or give everything away? It didn't. His actions spoke louder than words. 

If she remembered the betrayal, it would damage her. Like it had damaged him. So many things had damaged him, but realising exactly how much he could allow a loved one to go through without ever doing anything about it out of fear... that was the source of most of his self-loathing, even to this day.

"You're so quiet," she forced out through her clattering teeth. "Hoping I'll freeze to death if you wait long enough?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "I gave you a blanket, didn't I? I was considering whether I have to wake up Madam Vera, or whether I can fix this myself."

"You can heal?" She'd wrapped the blanket tightly around herself, but looked as if she was immersed in ice rather than wrapped in a thick cloak and a blanket. "I don't think a headache potion will be enough."

"Not exactly," he admitted. "But I do have some other potions that I think might work."

She immediately looked wary. "No, I don't want your potions! Get me Vera, please."

"I won't poison you, Granger," Draco said with a weary sigh. "Not in my own office after at least a dozen people saw me take you from the Three Broomsticks."

"I just... suddenly have this feeling that potions from you are a bad thing, so I'll pass."

He almost choked on the chills going through _him_ at that statement. "One potion," he insisted. "If it doesn't work, I'll get you Madam Vera immediately. I promise."

She looked extremely wary, but reluctantly nodded and he went to get the potion. He didn't even really know why he had it. It must be some kind of masochistic urge that prompted him to continuously make it. Years ago when the war had ended and he'd realised he could never give Granger the antidote, even if he'd wanted to, he'd begun brewing the original memory-erasing potion once a year, suspiciously close to the time where he'd first given it to her, but true to his promise he'd never drunk it himself. Each time he used the memories she'd forced him to keep--and he'd kept all of them, they were safely under lock and key, every single one--to brew it.

He'd found that the first time had been the hardest. He'd still wanted her then, and going through the memories to add what to remove had been agony. The second time had only been a little better. The third time, he'd almost felt normal before he'd had to relive it. The fourth time, he'd idly wondered if she was happy now, with Weasley. Every single time since then, he'd barely thought about it. It had become a ritual. A thing to soothe his anxieties about her some day remembering.

Now it had been made for the tenth time since she'd drunk it, and he would give it to her again. Somehow, it felt like he'd been waiting for it all these years.

"Here," he said, walking up to her with the phial. "You need to drink up. It doesn't taste like much, but you should immediately feel the effects."

She slowly reached out to accept it. "Um, could I get a glass of water with this?" she quietly asked.

He didn't see any reason to object, so he went back to his private quarters for a glass, and when he returned, Granger had a scrunched up face and an empty phial. He gave her the glass, and she drank it as if truly thirsty.

"I thought you said it didn't taste like much?" she finally said, gagging a little.

He shrugged, ridiculously happy and relieved that she'd taken the potion. "I obviously meant it didn't taste very good."

"Right." She scowled at him.

Some of her colour was returning, and her teeth seemed to have stopped clattering. Good. It didn't look like they were going to need Madam Vera after all.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.

"A bit. I probably just need a good night's sleep now, and then I'll be fine."

Draco figured that was probably true. "Speaking of sleep, aren't you tired?" He searched her face for any evidence of fatigue.

As if on cue, she yawned. "You're right. I am. Best be going, then."

She got to her feet a bit unsteadily, but then she straightened her back and walked right out of there.

_Yes_ , he thought. _Everything is going to be all right now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really feel right with previews for this fic, since I like the freedom to edit ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE. Reassuring, isn't it? Instead I want to use end notes to address things that have come up to anyone who might care. If you don't care, don't worry, you aren't missing out on much by not reading. ;)
> 
> **Carys:**  
>  I know a few people (or perhaps even more than a few) thought she was actually Marilyn at the end of chapter one and I didn't correct you. I'm sorry. I just thought it might take too much spoiling/explaining to go there. I had actually originally considered placing Marilyn in Hogsmeade but ended up with a massive case of _what would really be the point of that?_ She was never really interested in Draco and vice versa, so to have them be lovers like this ten years later didn't make much sense to me. Also, it would come with the added baggage of Draco having messed with her mind as well and either having reversed it (which is a very dangerous thing to do indeed) or consent issues. There will be enough consent issues with Hermione without adding to it here. So, uh, yeah. Enter Carys! Which brings me to...
> 
> **OCs and why I use them:**  
>  I know some people don't like OCs at all, and I know that some of you are turned off by Darius and Carys (and probably will be by Madam Vera and Variel as well). I know that some people feel that the HP universe is a vast place filled with so many characters that there's no need at all to make your own characters. Just pick a name out of a hat! But there are multiple reasons why I still choose to use OCs. 
> 
> 1) They do not come with the kind of baggage that a canon character does and do not have to conform to any kind of canon characterisation and/or address canon relationships. They are clean canvases that I can paint on however I want without actual canon or someone's head canon interfering with it.
> 
> 2) I personally find it very unrealistic when everyone teaching at Hogwarts/living in Hogsmeade were at Hogwarts at the same time as Harry & Co. I mean, come on. Wizarding Britain may be small, but it's not _that_ small. 
> 
> 3) Reader expectations can be taxing. Canon characters stand out in a way that OCs don't, and readers expect far more from them. To put it bluntly, I can take a character like Carys and use her once or a dozen times and nobody will question it because she was created for this story only. If I were to call her Pansy or Ginny or even Daphne, however... people would expect more from her and they would attribute motivations to her based on her role in canon/fanon. 
> 
> Reader Expectation is also my problem with Neville. He's married to Hannah and teaches at Hogwarts because JKR said he would be, and I tried to stick to canon (even where it's just authorial head canon) where I could, but he's actually quite irrelevant in person. Yet because he's present, he is expected to play a role. There will, of course, be a very small part for him, but he has no place in the main story whatsoever. It's possible that I could have forcibly created one by carving into the characters Darius and Vera for interactions (note that he couldn't replace either of them) but, honestly, each character given an important role requires thousands of more words added to the story in order to round them off and make them more than two-dimensional plot devices, and I simply didn't feel like it was a priority. It made more sense to me that he'd have his own life.
> 
> So there ya have it... I hope you enjoyed this chapter and my small lecture on My Choices And Why I Make Them. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thanks to withdrawnred and UnseenLibrarian for allowing me to pester them with a word choice question. :)

Hermione was filled with the most wonderful tingling sensations as her lover stood over her, touching her, making her squirm beneath him. He stayed her with a pleading voice. He was not yet inside her but he was standing so close, she could feel him. She could feel his need. The very idea that she could make him so excited made her both playful and eager for more, so she squirmed again, this time earning herself a sharp reprimand and a bruising grip on her hip. She didn't care. She just wanted more, and for some reason, she couldn't tell him.

Suddenly he bent down and bit her neck, and there was a blinding flash of reddish grey, making her discontent and she struggled against him, but only for a moment. Then he was moving inside of her, and it was the most wonderful feeling. It was all so new and exciting. He was doing his very best to hold back for her, she just knew, and then it all came together in a burst of bright colours. She looked up at her lover to tell him how amazing it had been, only to see that he was no longer close. She was now standing outside. The moon was full above her, and he had his back turned to her, his hair a bit too long and unmistakably blond. " _How can you say that I don't love you?_ " he whispered.

She frowned. No, it couldn't be him. She looked again, and now he was definitely a young teenage Malfoy, sneering at her and saying, " _I hate you! Nobody hears about this, do you hear?_ "

Gasping, Hermione sat up in her bed, staring wide-eyed at the darkness. Then, as it occurred to her what she had just dreamed, she clasped her mouth with one hand before she let out a horrified giggle.

She'd had a sex dream about _Draco Malfoy_ just now. Clearly, celibacy was addling her brains.

But then again, maybe it hadn't been Malfoy doing the actual sex part. People tended to turn into other people at the blink of an eye when she dreamt things, and they said the most confusing things that always made sense until the moment she woke up. Even if it had been him, it was probably because of that whole loaded conversation she'd had with him on their way back from Hogsmeade. Or maybe it had been because of that potion he'd fed her. Who only knew what had been in that potion? She'd only sipped enough to be able to fake having taken it. The rest had generously been poured down a potted plant that Hermione had been very grateful to find as she'd been wary of doing magic. She'd then slapped her own cheeks in an attempt to look warmed up and healthy.

She'd never trusted Draco Malfoy very much, but she especially didn't trust him when he was suddenly so very concerned for her health and insisting on taking care of it personally. Her every instinct had told her not to drink that potion, and she had long since learned to trust her instincts. Instead she'd waited and gone to the hospital wing where she'd woken up Madam Vera to get a safer treatment. If there were a next time, she would keep her mouth shut around Malfoy and go straight to Madam Vera. She didn't know exactly what Malfoy was up to, but she planned on never finding out. She'd simply be more cautious around him and continue to trust her instincts.

Never mind that those supposedly trustworthy instincts were currently telling her that trying to make this sex dream real might be worth it. Apparently instincts didn't mix well with hormones.

* * *

After eating a light breakfast and getting a head start on marking essays, Hermione decided to seek out company for a while. Darius was usually hanging around the staffroom, hoping for someone to help him with his projects. The other teachers sometimes made short appearances as well. And Malfoy... Malfoy's habits were rather erratic, so she didn't even venture a guess. Darius had at one point commented that Malfoy used to be around the staffroom more often, but perhaps Malfoy simply didn't have the time these days.

Hermione found it more likely that Malfoy was simply avoiding her. She didn't know why exactly he _would_ avoid her, but the distaste in his face whenever he looked at her was too pronounced for her to miss. He disliked her to a degree that seemed to come awfully close to hate. That saddened her. She didn't particularly like being hated--who did?--and she didn't quite understand what she'd done to deserve this. Normally, she would attempt to change this state, but Malfoy's eagerness to give her some strange potion last night gave her pause. It was potentially very bad for her health to get caught up with Malfoy and she would probably be much better off merely leaving him alone.

Of course, with that thought dominating her mind, the only one down in the staffroom today would turn out to be Draco Malfoy. If he'd heard her enter, he certainly didn't make the effort to show it. Rather, he remained engrossed in the newspaper he was reading. Hermione stopped and--because she really was terrible at leaving people alone--wondered if he'd acknowledge her if she simply stood there and stared at him long enough.

Putting it to the test, she folded her arms over her chest and pursed her lips, examining the silence nobody was filling. It really wasn't that silent. There was the rustle of her clothes whenever she moved and the crackle of his newspaper, whenever he turned a page. Not to mention this very low hum that she couldn't quite place. Narrowing her eyes, she considered for a bit, finally concluding that since there was no electricity, the hum must be made by the castle. What she was hearing was the hum of a millennium's worth of magic. It was really quite extraordinary--awe-inspiring, even.

Finally, he lowered the paper, pinning her with an annoyed glare. Oh, so he _had_ noticed her, then?

"Hermione! You're up!" It was Darius who had entered behind Hermione, momentarily distracting her. When she glanced back at Malfoy, he'd returned to his newspaper. How typical.

"Indeed," she said, flashing her brightest smile at Darius. "Did he say something?" she nodded towards Malfoy.

"What, Grumpy there? No. He's not exactly talkative, as you know. But this _place_ is rather chatty. Word even has it that his girlfriend demanded he walk you home. That must have been delightful for everyone." Darius seemed to have problems keeping a straight face at the very thought.

She snorted. "Yes. Positively stimulating."

She didn't even have to look at Malfoy to know that he'd raised an eyebrow at her choice of words. Flashes from the dream she'd had last night rose in her mind and she fought hard not to blush. She should probably go easy on the innuendo today.

Darius looked equally intrigued and unfortunately didn't seem to have a subtle or merciful bone in his body. "What makes you say that, then?"

She shrugged and sat down, avoiding looking at Malfoy. She could lie. She _should_ lie. But if she lied, that would mean acknowledging that the dreams meant something. They most definitely didn't. "Nothing," she lied, glancing back at him.

Malfoy's mouth twitched, and she knew she'd somehow still given it away. Blast it.

Darius sat down in his usual spot. "Apart from having to deal with this bloke, were you all right last night?"

"Oh, yes. I was fine. I had some, uh, interesting dreams, but that's hardly worth mentioning." _So why had she?_ She hoped nobody would ask any additional questions.

But of course they did.

"What kind of dreams?" Malfoy had suddenly decided to be a part of the conversation, forcing her to look at him.

His eyes were oddly intense, making a shock go through her lower abdomen as she remembered what last night's dreams _had_ been about.

"Oh, now you get curious." Darius sniggered.

"I'm not even certain what happened in them," Hermione lied. Lying was becoming a nasty habit, but she simply couldn't tell Malfoy the details. "It was merely very... clear. Very colourful. A bit feverish." Oh, yes. Definitely feverish. And colourful. In a sense.

"It could mean something. Don't leave out any details," Malfoy prodded.

She opened her mouth to refuse replying, but then thought better of it. He'd think she was hiding something. Oh, she definitely shouldn't have said anything. "It really wasn't anything extraordinary," she hedged instead. "It was all very confusing and didn't make any sense. I've forgotten most of it, actually." _More lies_.

He gave her a long look. "I thought you said the dreams were clear."

"They were," she said. "I woke up convinced they were real. But everything faded rather quickly." Except that her pounding heart and the throbbing between her legs had taken quite some time to fade. But he _really_ didn't need to know that, and she had to stop thinking about it!

She'd never had much of a poker face, but she did her best to emulate one anyway.

"Hm." Malfoy narrowed his eyes, studying her in the most unsettling way. Then he relaxed. "It was probably nothing, then."

If he hadn't been so hard to read (there was nothing wrong with his poker face) she would have thought he was relieved. She couldn't help but study him now to try to figure out why he was so interested in some silly fever dream.

He stared back at her, but when she didn't let that faze her, he abruptly excused himself and left the room with not as much as a backward glance.

Hermione blinked. "He really is an odd one, isn't he?" she asked the chair he'd been occupying.

"You'll get used to him," Darius said. "But about the dream... you left out the good parts, didn't you?" He sat down in the newly vacated chair and pursed his lips at her.

"What good parts?" Oh, dear.

Darius snorted. "You looked so embarrassed. You dreamt about _him_ , didn't you?"

If she kept denying it, it would only seem extra suspicious. Curse her for being too honest. "Is that supposed to mean something now?"

He shook his head. "Not at all. I had a dream about Minerva the other night, and she isn't quite my type."

Hermione couldn't help the giggle. Minerva McGonagall must be pushing a hundred by now, and Darius couldn't be much older than thirty. Talk about what a May-December relationship that would be!

"So what was it about?" Darius prodded. "I promise I won't tease. Much."

"I don't think so."

"Come now, Hermione. There's no reception for my telly here, so my entertainment options are already severely limited. Don't deny me this chance to know something that Malfoy doesn't."

Hermione made a face. "It was as bad as it gets."

"Oh?"

Hermione sighed. What did it matter if Darius knew? What did it even matter if _Malfoy_ knew? It had been a silly dream, nothing more. Why was she behaving like one of the school girls she was teaching? "I had sex with him," she confessed. "In the dream, I mean. On a table or something, because I seem to remember he was standing over me and I was on something hard and flat. But the scenery changed once or twice so I can't be completely certain."

"Why can't you have those kind of dreams about me?" Darius teased. "Then we could go and see if reality would live up to the dream. As a highly scientific experiment, of course."

She ignored the teasing. "The funny thing, though, was that I think it must have been my first time. At least there was some kind of pain. It's all very odd since the dream didn't at all resemble my actual first time, which was... uh, well, not relevant actually, so never mind." She blushed again. Some things were private.

"So it was _bad_ sex, then?" he asked, perking up. "Maybe it's your subconscious's way of telling you that tangling with Malfoy will be bad for you."

"Oh, and it's not like you have an agenda," she half-scolded, half-teased.

He shook his head. "So maybe I do. A little bit. But the thing is... Malfoy is... I've known him for two years now, and Carys is the first witch that I've seen him treat like an actual human being. Well, apart from Minerva and let's not go there again. I don't know if you actually mean to encourage him with your hints and blushes, but..." Darius grimaced.

Hermione stared at him. He thought she was trying to encourage Malfoy? And he was giving her a serious warning? "I thought the two of you were some kind of friends," she said after a short pause.

"Friends?" he asked with a short laugh. "Whatever gave you that idea? Malfoy tolerates other people. He does not make _friends_. I try to stay somewhat on his good side because he's always willing to supply a bit of magic to get me to shut up and leave him alone, but that's as far as it goes."

"Oh." Hermione sat back. She'd of course noticed how the two of them addressed each other, but she hadn't actually thought there'd been this level of dislike behind it.

"But I suppose he's not a bad sort entirely," Darius amended, seeing the look on her face. "He doesn't ignore me any more than he ignores anyone else, and that's more than can be said for most people. Things are going much better for me than I could ever have hoped when I took the mad chance and applied for this job, but there are those who don't want to see me in this position. Each year so far, a few students have dropped my class after learning that I can't do magic."

"That's awful!" Hermione immediately objected.

He smiled at her, indulgently, as if she were an over-eager pet. "I suppose. But I prefer to focus on the good things in life."

That, Hermione supposed, was one of the greater differences between her and Darius. She was always going to focus on the things that needed to be fixed.

* * *

Bracing herself and holding firmer onto her load of scrolls, Hermione firmly knocked on the one blasted door she had tried to avoid. As expected, she was told in a clear tone to " _Enter!_ " and so she did.

Draco Malfoy was seated behind his desk, marking essays. And from the amount of red ink, she would say he was doing a _very_ thorough job of it. Really. If he was so opposed to the idea of being compared to Severus Snape, he shouldn't act like him.

She hadn't seen him about for a while now, except at the occasional meal. She got the distinct impression that he was avoiding her. But considering the nature of the dream she'd had, she didn't mind that overly much. It was very difficult to have an intimate dream about someone and then look them in the eyes without blushing, after all.

"Granger?" he asked, rising from his seat, but not offering her a chair. "Can I help you?"

She hadn't noticed the first time she'd been here, but his office was devoid of any personal touches. No pictures, no funny little knick-knack that didn't belong, not even any books beyond what she assumed must be the most standard writings for his subject. It was like he didn't want to feel too at home here. It made her sad to see how consistently he seemed to reject anything that could be warm and comforting in his life. There wasn't even a picture of his family, which was something Hermione would have expected if she'd thought about it.

But that was none of her business, so she merely said, "I've come up with some ideas for a House Unity project to be done later in the year and I was handing these out to the other Heads of Houses for some initial feedback."

"That's... good?" He looked puzzled and a little annoyed.

She decided to play with him. "Yes, isn't it?"

He didn't seem to want to play. "But what does it have to do with me? I'm not a Head."

Oh, the potential to make fun of him with that unintentional pun. But she must not stoop that low. Not right now, anyway. "No, I know. Horace Slughorn is the Head of Slytherin." She smiled and patiently waited for a response.

"So why are you _here_?" he finally gritted out.

"Why, he sent me here, of course," she blithely replied. "He listened to my pitch and then decided it was a task for young people to handle."

Actually, he'd mostly seemed like he'd wanted to get rid of her, and Malfoy looked as if he suspected as much.

"He can't put it all on me!" he insisted. "Tell McGonagall that he's trying to weasel out of it and what kind of poor message that sends. I'm sure she'll beat him into submission."

Hermione shook her head. "Mm, not really, no. She decided it was a marvellous idea and asked me to arrange for a younger team across the Houses. That means you, me, Darius Dorcas and Variel Volubilis. Wow, try saying that three times fast."

"Dorky doesn't have a House."

"He functions under Hufflepuff. Grubbly-Plank had no problem with him representing her House."

He scowled extra hard as if it were her fault that Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, current Head of Hufflepuff, hadn't put up a fight. "What's Flitwick's excuse? Variel doesn't even live in the castle!"

"She doesn't need to, actually. As the Transfiguration teacher, she's visible enough. She's agreed to stay late some days, and nobody said the Heads _couldn't_ help us at all. Have you finished protesting?"

He placed his palms on his desk and leaned forwards, a strangely intense look in his eyes. "I don't want to get caught up in any of your stupid projects, Granger."

"My projects aren't stupid!" she immediately objected.

He snorted. "What's this project about, then?"

"An outing to a Muggle town."

"That's about as stupid as it gets." He sat back down, all but dismissing her presence.

She sniffed, a little wounded. "The othering of Muggles, to the extent where nobody seems to know even the very basics, is what makes our society so weak in the face of hate- and fear-mongering."

"If that's what Dorky wants to do with his Muggle Studies class, then by all means--"

"No, it should be mandatory."

"What, all of the school?"

"No, I was thinking just one of the years to begin with. Maybe fourth year, that's nice and in the middle. Or seventh year, if we want to reach them with at least one project before they leave, although their heads are probably so full of the NEWTs that--"

"Could you shut up for a second?" He'd sat back and was rubbing his temple as if he had a headache. "Why don't you just do whatever you want?" he then said, as if refusing to participate was promoting unity in any way.

"Because you'd all have to come along if we're going anywhere," she said. " _Especially_ you. Slytherin is the House I'm expecting the most resistance from."

"Fine. I'll do whatever it takes to get you to shut up and leave me alone."

Oh, how frustrating! Why did he always have to be such a disinterested git? She seemed to be able to vaguely remember a time when he'd had passions too. For all the wrong things, granted, but there had to be a way to redirect that. He had to have new things that caught his interest and made him want to devote his time and energies to them. She would find _something_ that would make him want to help her, even if it killed her! But first things first. "That's not good enough! You have to get involved, Malfoy, and help us work towards a better understanding across the Houses!"

"Oh, I have to do that, do I?" He scowled at her.

"Yes!"

"In that case--the Muggle town trip is an even stupider idea. If you want to promote _House_ unity and not just try to sell one of your numerous uninspired causes, you'll have to do something that's closer to home."

"Huh." She sat down uninvited. "What do you suggest?"

"I don't know, Granger. Something that mixes it up a bit so they would _have_ to socialize outside their own Houses."

Hermione nodded, seeing his reasoning. "I guess we have to think of something to that effect, then."

She ignored his dramatically pained look. He'd been the one to invite a whole new idea, so he really shouldn't complain when he got his way. 

Her decision to leave him alone had been completely forgotten.

* * *

"So what was wrong with the staffroom?" Darius asked, looking around the meeting room Hermione had hijacked for the occasion.

"The staffroom," she explained, unloading her parchments on the large table, "is where we go to relax. I wanted a more productive setting."

"That makes sense," Variel Volubilis--the wizarding world certainly seemed to favour tongue twister names--said, sitting down next to Malfoy, far too closely to be subtle, since they were only the four of them in this room. Malfoy, who Hermione had expected to be either indifferent or sneer, shot Variel a mischievous little smile that Variel took as an invitation to lean even closer.

Hermione didn't actually know Variel very well, but already the witch annoyed her. She'd seen her around, of course, at some meals and at the monthly staff meeting, but the other woman tended to go home as soon as she was done with her classes for the day unless she had office hours. She was a few years older than the rest of them--yet not old enough to stop Darius from flirting--and usually seemed nice enough. Then again, possibly no witch was old enough to stop Darius. It didn't matter, though, as she was too busy going after Malfoy to even notice Darius's antics. And Malfoy... although usually aloof, seemed to return those looks now.

"What brought this on?" Darius asked. "I thought we already had a plan."

"Malfoy killed it," Hermione said, making Malfoy sigh and close his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. That annoyed her as well. Why could he never be civil around _her_ , when he could flirt with _Variel_?

"I'm sorry I ever said anything," he said to no one in particular.

"But I wanted to go!" Darius said, looking quite disappointed.

"You can still go, Dorky," Malfoy said. "No one is keeping you tied down here."

"I can't take students out without anyone with magic accompanying us," Darius growled at Malfoy. "And you very well know that."

"I'll go with you," Hermione offered, rather absentmindedly.

Darius immediately perked up. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. But I want to solve this first."

"So... " Variel said, glancing at Malfoy but addressing Hermione. "What exactly is it you need?"

Hermione took a deep breath, willing all of her irrational annoyance with half the people present to go away before she replied, "There's a lot of competitiveness between the Houses, which is perfectly fine, but the students tend to allow that rivalry to take over. I want to introduce something that will force them to see beyond their own House and possibly form interhouse friendships."

"You can't force people to form friendships, Granger," Malfoy said.

"No, but I can force them to do things that make it easier to form those friendships!" she snapped, making Malfoy raise an eyebrow at her. If she didn't know better, she'd say he looked amused.

"I like it," Variel said. "Something like a-a school play? They had those at Beauxbatons every year I worked there."

"That's... that's actually a good idea," Hermione said, making a note of it whilst disliking Variel more each passing minute. Why did her suggestion have to make sense?

"Wrong," Malfoy said in an extremely bored voice. "It's an awful idea, although not nearly as awful as going to a Muggle village." He didn't even seem to notice how put out Variel looked at his blunt dismissal. Hermione noticed and had to suppress a smile.

She mentally scolded herself for being petty and asked, "Why's that?" Then she narrowed her eyes at him for good measure.

"Think it through for a moment, will you?" Draco asked, haughty as ever. "There are no current students with a passion for the arts, or they would have approached someone for permission to set something up or at the very least we'd see some shenanigans in their free time. So someone in this room will get stuck doing _all_ the work. That means either trying to get students to sign up or, worse, making participation mandatory, which would probably result in active resistance from the students. Then there's coming up with a script, where and when to rehearse and perform, hours and hours of directing, costumes, music, scenery... and I haven't even touched on all the scheduling and re-scheduling that would need to be done to fit in lessons, homework, quidditch, runny noses, the odd detention... Do any of you care enough to do even a fraction of that? I certainly don't."

Hermione glowered at him. He was right. The majority of the work load would land on the teachers. And why was she so bloody pleased that Variel's idea wasn't so good after all? "Nobody said this would be a free ride."

"No, but you're hopelessly naïve," he retorted. "You think if you force the kids together, they will naturally bond. They won't. The division is there for a reason--because people _like_ it that way. Nobody is telling them they can't be friends with someone from another House. They just don't always happen to have anything in common!"

There was a brief silence where Hermione didn't quite know how to respond to his statement.

"Wow," Darius then said. "Grumpy suddenly has a lot of opinions!"

"But he has a point," Variel added to nobody's great surprise. "I mean... I'm still supporting the general idea, but I'm not about to sacrifice my every waking moment to this cause. And I see children mingling between Houses all the time. The only Houses that don't really want to mingle with each other are Gryffindor and Slytherin, and that's because they are polar opposites."

"You see Slytherin mingling with Hufflepuff?" Hermione asked.

Variel shrugged. "I have at least one sixth year Slytherin girl and Hufflepuff boy that are seeing each other. They're both very good at Quidditch, and he frequently laments that she has to play for the wrong team and keep losing him the Cup."

"Times _have_ changed, Granger," Malfoy said with a vague sneer. "I thought you would have at least watched the kids a little."

"I've tried to," Hermione said, ignoring his derision as best she could and making more notes, "but in my class they all tend to sort themselves by House. I haven't had much chance to watch them socially outside lessons."

"Sounds to me," Darius said, "like it's really the two of you that need to hash it out. Between your Houses, I mean."

Malfoy now openly sneered.

Variel hurriedly added, "But of course we will be here to help."

Hermione fought back a groan. It really did seem like she might need to talk to Malfoy about this. In private. "All right," she forced herself to say. "Let's think about this and then meet up again in a few days, shall we?"

Naturally, Malfoy was the first one out of there, swiftly followed by Variel. Hermione took her time gathering her notes and Darius simply sat there, watching her. It was unnerving.

Finally, just as she was getting ready to leave, Darius said, "That was interesting."

"What was?" she asked, taking extra care not to crumble the parchment.

"You, pretending that you weren't at all interested in him. Tell me," he leaned forwards as if avidly interested in her response, "what's so special about that git?"

Hermione couldn't help the blush that began to spread. She couldn't quite figure it out either. She didn't know why she felt so drawn to Malfoy, when all signs pointed towards him actively hating her. He was hardly even the most handsome man she'd ever met. In fact, Darius might actually be better-looking. "I don't know that he's special. I need him for this project."

"I know," he calmly assured her. "It's just... you're looking at him, Hermione. And you were scowling at Variel, whether you want to own it or not."

"This may be news to you," Hermione replied just as calmly, "but I'm not actually at Hogwarts for the selection in men. I'm only trying to do my job and do it well, and I'm not certain how to do that with one wizard I need to work with actively avoiding me, and the other one flirting with any witch in sight!" She shot him a very pointed look.

He merely smiled at her. "Ouch. I'm not a wizard, though. And my women don't need to be witches. There are other ways to make magic than actual magic..."

"My mistake!" Hermione snapped.

"Also," Darius continued, rather unfazed and with the most annoying grin, "what about Variel? She's not even subtle about her interest in Malfoy--are you going to deny that it affects you?"

Hermione hesitated. She couldn't stand Variel, but she fully realised that she had no good reason for it. She also realised what Darius would make of it if he knew. "She was a lot more accommodating than you and Malfoy," was all she said. "Right now she's probably my favourite out of the lot of you."

Darius shook his head. "All right. If that's how you want to play it. I suppose you don't care where I saw her hands go, either. Or that Malfoy didn't seem to mind. Or that there are a _lot_ of empty rooms between here and their destinations."

"Why would I care?" Hermione made a conscious effort not to frown or grip her notes too hard. She really didn't care. Besides, Malfoy already had a girlfriend, so it was not only stupid but also rather pointless to begin caring. Any other witch, including her, would only be a plaything to him. An open relationship meant that his bed was open, not his heart. She really didn't need to become physically involved with a co-worker. She most _certainly_ didn't need to risk becoming emotionally attached to someone so... so... mean, selfish and _immature_. But rather than elaborate on that, she simply added, "I only think it's annoying that everyone here finds... _mating_... more fascinating than teaching!"

At that, Darius grinned again. "Well, the students also find _mating_ more fascinating than learning, so I suppose it all works out in the end."

With a disgusted sound, Hermione left an openly laughing Darius behind.

* * *

"Malfoy!"

"Go away, Granger. Find someone else to stalk."

Hermione placed her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes at the annoying git. He was hiding out in his office as usual. It really was a rubbish hiding spot. If he didn't want to be _stalked_ , he should consider hiding somewhere else.

"We need to talk about the House Unity project," she needlessly said. He knew fully well why she was there, even if he didn't want to acknowledge it. For two days she'd tried, completely in vain, to get him alone. Now that she finally had, she wasn't going to leave that easily.

"We don't really," he replied. "You just do what you usually do and decide what you feel needs to be done, and I'll make sure the Slytherins know."

She made a derisive sound and marched up to his desk to throw down her rolls of parchment. "You need to do more than that. Darius was right. Slytherin and Gryffindor need to get along the most."

"Dorky just wanted to get out of having to do anything himself, and he succeeded."

"He didn't. He's offered to help with anything we need."

Malfoy sighed as if talking to her was a great chore. To him it probably was, and even though she tried not to let it get to her, it still stung and made her angry. "When will you learn, Granger?" he said, patiently, as if to a child. "You're actually the only one who cares about this project of yours. The only one who thinks it's needed."

She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. "McGonagall feels it's needed."

"McGonagall is terrified that Hogwarts might create another Dark Wizard during her time, so she'll do anything to prevent it. My subject is probably the most regulated one for that very reason. If you made her think that there's any way that someone with a dark penchant might revise their thinking this way, then of course she's going to let you do it."

Hermione glared at him, but he didn't flinch or in any way change his expression. "Like it or not, Malfoy," she finally said, "we're _going_ to do this. The more you fight it, the more time you will have to spend with me."

He sighed again in the most annoying and exaggerated manner. "If I can't change this, Granger, then at least tell me how I can end it quickly."

Once more she swallowed the sting of his constant rejection, and sat down in front of him. "You could start by giving me some really good ideas."

He stared at her in disbelief. " _I_ have to give _you_ ideas? You've had days to figure this out! And did I mention yet that I don't care?"

"Yes, but anything I come up with is immediately shot down by Your Highness, so I think you could at least give me an idea of what would be acceptable!"

He blinked, quite taken aback by her tone. "I see. Well, I suppose... force them to look inwards, not outwards."

"Inwards?" she prodded.

"Yes. Each House prides itself of certain strengths. Make them use those. All together. To create something that they wouldn't be able to on their own."

That actually sounded quite fascinating. "What creations did you have in mind?"

He scowled at her. "What? I'm supposed to do all the work? You figure it out!"

Now it was Hermione's turn to sigh. For a second, it had almost seemed like he might take an interest in this or at least give it some thought. "All right. I'm certain that if we spend hours and hours together, you'll eventually--"

"Kill you? I really have no idea what they should make, Granger. I'm not that creative. Or interested. Did I mention my lack of interest?"

"Creative." She mulled that over. "Oh! What if it were a creative project, and they had to think of something themselves?"

Draco shot her a skeptical glance. "No guidelines? That'll end well."

"Of course there will be guidelines. But it'll still force them to communicate in order to come up with something."

"And then _they_ might kill each other. Brilliant! I've always wanted fewer students."

"Oh, stuff it." He raised an eyebrow at her but she ignored him. "Communication is what we _want_ ," she continued, "We will assign groups with one student from each House where applicable, and we will force them to use at least two of our four combined subjects and mark them on how well they do and, oh my, we really solved this, didn't we?" She began scribbling, very excited with the new progress.

"I still think it sounds terribly vague."

"Shut up. Were you born to piss on everyone's parade? This will be great!"

"Yes, as a matter a fact I was b-- Wait... did you say two of _our_ subjects? No, you can't do that!"

She looked up, feeling fairly exasperated with Malfoy at this point. "And why ever not?"

"You have Arithmancy, don't you? And Dorcas has Muggle Studies? The vast majority of the groups will have at least one member that isn't taking your classes, and they will have to fall back on the mandatory-to-a-point classes, which will happen to be my Defence Against the Dark Arts and Variel's Transfiguration. You can't do that to us!"

"Hmm." Hermione stopped writing and thoughtfully tapped her quill against her lower lip. "In spite of your terrible whinging, I suppose you do have a point."

"I always have a point."

"Of course you do, dear," she said with all the patience of an elderly matron. "Now do be quiet and let me think."

He scowled at her.

"All right, how about this, then..." she began, completely unfazed by his bad temper, "they freely avail themselves of _all_ subjects, not just any of ours, and everyone extend their office hours as needed? This will also make it relevant to include House Unity themes in everyone's subjects. It will truly be a school-wide project."

"Could this potentially annoy Horace Slughorn?"

"Definitely."

"Then I say go for it."

She cracked a smile. "That's what I thought."

"But, Granger..." He leaned forwards in his chair and glared at her. "Do not take to following me around simply because you can. I will not spend more time with you than I absolutely have to. Do you understand that?"

She slowly shook her head, and his stare lost some of its power as the burning determination gave way to confusion.

"What?" he weakly asked.

"You asked me if I understood. I don't."

"What's there to understand? I simply don't want--"

"Why do you hate me so much?" she bluntly asked. If he'd been more subtle, she could probably have let it slide, but since he kept throwing his hate in her face, she felt she deserved to know _why_.

"You really have to ask me that?"

"Yes! I do! I told you that _I_ don't hate _you_ , and I certainly have far more reason to--oh, don't look at me like that! You know I have far more reason to hate you than you do to hate me!"

It seemed to take him some effort, but he did manage to tear his gaze from her and tensely stare off to the side for a moment before he said, "I know."

"Then why?"

"You're an unwelcome reminder."

She really had to pull it out of him, didn't she? So be it. Even if she had to roll up her sleeves and get in knee-deep with his insults and evasions, she would do it. If she had to endure being snubbed by him for months yet to come, she would at least know why. "Of what?"

"I don't want to--"

" _Of what?_ "

He glared at her again. "Of a time best forgotten. Of things I had to do. Things... I never wanted to do. You remind me of every single event that brought out everything ugly and weak and hateful in me, and I wish you'd just... go away."

She was completely shocked. "Why do _I_ \--?"

"You were there, Granger. For all of it. Nobody else here was. McGonagall and Longbottom were never quite as actively in my face as you were. Or quite as... _good_... for that matter." The word 'good' was said with such a twisted sneer, like it was the worst quality one could possibly have.

"So I alone remind you of all these bad things?"

"At the moment, yes. Tough, huh?"

"But you know it's absurd to blame me for any of that!"

He made a derisive sound. "I'm not stupid, Granger. Of course that would be absurd. Rather, I was as spoiled and self-indulgent as you've ever thought me to be and, congratulations, I ended up paying the price. I'm sure it makes you happy to know that. Unfortunately, your happiness isn't something I'm currently in a position to appreciate."

So she reminded him that he'd been spoiled and got in trouble? No, if the way he glared at her was any indicator, it was far worse than that. She couldn't help the uneasy feeling rising inside her. She knew for a fact that due to his young age, unfortunate influences, and willingness to cooperate after the war he hadn't received any official punishment after the war. "What, involving me, could you possibly have paid a price for?"

"You'll never know."

"But you'll still hate me for it?"

He didn't reply but his dark gaze said it all.

She took a deep breath. "You know what I think? I think you hate yourself but find it easier to take it out on me."

"Of course you do. Don't go there, Granger."

"You shouldn't hate yourself."

"Don't!" 

His voice had been raised and sharpened in clear warning as he gave that one-word command, but she still soldiered on. "It was such a long time ago, and whilst I certainly can't speak for everyone, I know that _I've_ decided to forgive y--"

A sudden movement and sharp noise gave her quite a fright as he'd abruptly jumped out of his chair and smacked his hands down on his desk. " _I said, 'don't!'_ " he hissed.

"Why?" she challenged, pretending that her heart wasn't trying to beat its way out of her chest.

He sneered at her. "Because you're not qualified to speak those words." And then, without as much as another glance in her direction, he simply walked out, leaving her confused and alone in his office.

* * *

The kisses made her forget why she shouldn't want them, why she shouldn't want him. She knew better--really, she did!--but she'd never felt like this before. If she did what she ought, what if she'd never feel like this again? She knew it was only physical, but didn't that only make it more excusable? Or was it too shallow and inexcusable, then? Should she want this boy? Was there any way to justify wanting him?

She broke the kiss, needing to think, but he wasn't discouraged by it. He just kissed her neck instead and, Merlin, that felt nice. She tried to make him stop, so she could clear her head, but he dismissed her. " _Don't think so much. Just feel._ "

He was holding her up against a wall, touching her intimately, making her thrash with the want. So good. She wanted it so much. Thinking was overrated.

Suddenly she was cold and alone again, and she blinked in confusion to see that he was standing a few steps away, his grey eyes cold and hard as stone. " _You hate me,_ " she said, feeling her stomach sink as she voiced the indisputable fact. She wished he would stop hating her. She had a feeling that if only he would stop hating her, things could be so very good between them. She'd missed him so much. All she wanted was to be with him.

" _That’s right I do,_ " he said, his voice twisted with loathing. " _I hate you and your two friends, The Boy Who Stalks and sidekick Beggar Boy, with all my heart. That doesn’t keep me from wanting to fuck you._ "

Hermione opened her eyes to stare at the dark. _The Boy Who Stalks_? _Beggar Boy_? It sounded like something Malfoy would've said a decade ago, given half the chance, but why he would do so in the middle of her otherwise quite promising dream, she had no idea. She felt very put off by how it had ended. The dreams weren't likely to become reality, so why was reality intruding on her otherwise enjoyable fantasies?

It was eerie that she was having another one of those dreams, though. She definitely ought to keep a log of them if she had more. A detailed log. For science!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, no "DVD extras" today. I am far too distracted by life to focus on giving interesting. in-depth info on any part of my progress. I'll attempt to catch up on review-replying instead. :)


	4. Chapter 4

Draco was trying very hard to bite back his frustration as he was pleading with the woman in front of him. Fresh out of bed, she was clad in a sensible nightgown and her hair was down, making her look much younger than she usually did wearing her cap and nurse's robes. She was very competent at what she did, although coming from a long line of various Healers and nurses--and with a name like _Aloe Vera_ \--he didn't suppose she'd had much choice in the matter. The title of 'Madam' was in Draco's estimation earned twice over, and he didn't mean that as a compliment.

"Please," he said when she didn't stop staring at the faded but still ugly and discoloured scar on his arm. "It really does hurt."

"Take off your robes," she said, and he complied. "Do any of your other scars hurt?" she asked, moving her wand along his torso to his back, examining all of the history he would prefer to forget. She moved back round to the front, hesitating for only the fraction of a second at the barely visible scar from a bite on his shoulder, but not commenting.

He was very grateful that she didn't comment. He didn't have the energy for even that. When she stood back in front of him, he sat down on the closest bed in a calculated move to appear more vulnerable. He wasn't lying about the pain in his arm, but he'd found that telling this woman the truth wasn't always enough to get what he wanted. Sometimes he had to embellish a bit.

"No. Just that one," he said.

"That old mark of yours can't hurt, Draco. It's dead tissue. That is, unless you think..." She hesitated. And with good reason, too. Nobody ever liked to bring up that particular possibility.

"The Dark Lord isn't back," he calmly said. "I already checked it for any signs of active magic like I always do. There is none. It just... _hurts_. It burns. Like fire and acid."

"I hate to say it, Draco, but if there _is_ any pain, then it's probably just... well..."

"Another symptom of me having the crazies?"

"Don't talk like that."

"But it's what you meant, isn't it?" He couldn't quite conceal his bitterness. They all saw him as either crazy or broken or both. They all both feared him and pitied him and he was quite sick of it. What he wouldn't give to simply be a _person_ again.

"Just because your pain is rooted in something psychological rather than something physiological doesn't mean that it's to be scoffed at and called 'the crazies'. Have you been taking that other potion I gave you?"

He snorted, actually a little amused at that question. "What? The one that made me constantly drowsy yet unable to sleep, and also quite unable to... perform, whether it be in the classroom or in bed? _That_ potion? No, thank you."

"I know the initial side effects can seem quite severe--"

"Can't you simply give me something for the pain like I asked?"

She sighed. "You know I can't."

Draco wasn't surprised, but disappointment still burned through him almost rivalling the pain in his arm. "Then how about something to help me sleep?"

"You know my rules. If you want something to help you sleep, you have to sleep up here where I can keep an eye on you. I can ready a bed for you--"

"For fuck's sake, Vera. Can't you just... help me for once?"

Her golden brown eyes looked so wounded that he almost regretted his outburst. Almost. "I _am_ helping you," she quietly said. "You know as well as I do that giving you what you're asking for will hurt you far more than it will help you."

"That one time was an accident. It won't happen again."

"No, you're right it won't. I'm here to see that you have no more 'accidents'."

"I'm not suicidal. I miscalculated, that's all."

"And when I took your potions from you, you had such awful withdrawal symptoms that I had to keep you up here for a week and monitor you for a long time after that. It would have caused that scandal you so wish to avoid _and_ you certainly wouldn't have a position here any longer if I hadn't told the Headmistress that it was the flu."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I'm grateful for what you did, but _it's not what you think_. It never was."

"Self-medication isn't that uncommon, Draco. Unfortunately, your skill with making your own potions merely gave you stronger things to work with."

"And it worked beautifully until you got me banned from getting most of the supplies," he muttered.

"You simply be grateful that Professor Slughorn was willing to assist in this matter, or I would have had no choice but to reveal everything for your own good."

"Yes, yes, my own good." He didn't even try to hide his bitterness any longer.

"Yes! Your own good! And you will not bully me, Draco Malfoy. Now. I'm sorry that the other potion isn't working for you, but there are other similar options and--"

"No."

"Oh, don't be such a baby."

He had to blink at that. That was quite a scoff, coming from the stern but always mild-mannered Madam Vera. "I'm serious," he insisted. "I don't want any of those potions."

"They come as pills and powders as well."

"Now I know you're only missing the point to irritate me."

"You need treatment, Draco. But not for the pain in your arm. The pain in your soul is much worse, and since you refuse to talk to anyone about it..."

"...You're simply going to suppress the few joys I _do_ have? Where's the logic in that?"

"That one was a bad fit. I'm sure we can find a better one for you."

"And I'm sure that I don't need it. I'm fine except for the pain in my arm." _And a few pains in my neck._

"Then I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do for you." She turned her back on him and disappeared back into her private area.

Draco scowled, but he knew when he wasn't going to get anywhere. Lovely. Another sleepless night was already taking its toll on him, and now he was expected to tolerate this pain for an unknown duration? He could already tell it would be a marvellous day. Reluctantly, he got to his feet and pulled his robe back over his head, absent-mindedly adjusting it as he walked towards the doors leading from the Hospital Wing. He was no more than two steps away from them when one door suddenly swung open and he was nearly run down.

"Oh!" Granger said, and then her eyes widened as she took him in. "Oh..."

"Be right with you!" Vera called from behind him and came out from her quarters, fastening her robes.

Granger's mouth dropped open, and it didn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what was going through her head. Draco's own hair was still a bit messy from pulling on his robes, and Vera hadn't put hers up yet. Draco couldn't help but grin. Granger really did think he'd shag anyone, didn't she? Well, he supposed he might've gone for Vera if she hadn't been so forbidding at times. And if she'd cared for male companionship at all. 

Granger didn't seem to realise that, though, since she was currently doing her best impression of a fish, and Draco was in the mood to make trouble. "Always a pleasure, Aloe," he smoothly said, "but it seems like I'd best be going now."

Vera shot him a semi-annoyed glance as she wasn't particularly fond of her own first name or anyone using it, but merely said, "Do come back tonight, Draco, and I'll see about fixing a bed up for you."

Her response couldn't have been any more perfect, and Draco left with a huge grin on his face.

* * *

In spite of the brief burst of humour in the morning, Draco soon found that his day was becoming every bit as miserable as he'd predicted. The students were annoying; he bored himself during his classes; when he made it to lunch only his _least_ favourite foods were left; he became more and more exhausted; _and his damn arm hurt like hell_.

The sideways glances Granger was sending him weren't helping. She had a growing fascination with him, it didn't take a genius to figure that much out. He'd hoped for weeks now that his constant hostility and apparent whoremongering ways would put her off, but he had to face that they didn't. If anything, she was beginning to look more and more curious. _Curious_ , of all things. He didn't need her to be curious about him. Especially not in the way that some of her looks suggested. She was now part of the reason he was losing sleep. He was rapidly approaching his wits' end concerning what to do about her and how to keep her at an arm's length. She already wouldn't be dissuaded from constantly bothering him about her projects no matter what he did, and now this.

He'd been scared of many things in his life, but nothing terrified him quite as much as Hermione Granger being persistent.

By the end of the day, he'd decided he had two choices. He could either sit around and wait for the other shoe to drop--as in, Granger somehow working everything out and contacting Magical Law Enforcement to have him incarcerated for life--or he could avail himself of the fact that it was Friday and go and distract himself.

He chose distraction.

It was long overdue anyway. Carys, the least clingy girlfriend in the history of relationships, had become worried enough about his absence that she'd actually owled him to hear if everything was all right up at the castle. It wasn't even as if he'd never stayed away for long periods of time before. He had his moods and she respected that. The very fact that she'd been worried enough to owl him said something about exactly how long it had been, and how unstable he'd been lately. He didn't fool himself one bit that people weren't running to Carys with every bit of gossip about him and what he was doing that they could find. She was clever enough to take it all in her stride, fortunately, but he supposed he _had_ been a little bit off even for him lately.

Besides, nothing ever distracted him quite as well from whatever was ailing him as sex. True, sometimes he was in a dark enough mood that he didn't even _want_ sex, but eventually he came around and that was when it was handy to have a girlfriend like Carys. Not that he couldn't get any other offers, but tangling with other witches around these parts would probably get messy rather quickly. Just look at Variel, for one. She claimed she understood him, but it was clear from the way she looked at him that she fancied she could cure everything that was wrong with him and thought everything would then be fluffy kittens, wedding bells and lots of babies.

He might be persuaded to get a cat, but everything else was quite out of the question. He'd tried curing himself via the love of a good woman, and it hadn't worked. It was a ridiculous, unrealistic fantasy, and he wished witches would stop applying it to him. He wasn't some dark and tortured soul who only needed a kiss and a hug to feel all better. He was legitimately fucked up. There was never going to be any way out of this hell that was contained within his own skin, his own brain, for him. He would have to live in it until he died, and Merlin only knew what would await him after _that_ happened. It was quite fortunate that he wasn't a religious man, or he would have been _really_ scared, everything considered.

Carys wasn't like that. She accepted him for who he was and didn't ask for more than he could give. He supposed it was because she in many ways resembled him--except she was a lot nicer--and like him, didn't tend to get tangled up in complicated romantic emotions that did nothing but ruin everything good.

But more importantly than all that--Carys was always ready and willing to distract him with her glorious feminine attributes, and the more he thought about it, the more he was reminded exactly _how_ long it had been since he had last availed himself of that perk. She probably wasn't the least lonely without him, but fortunately for him, she favoured him above everyone else, even if he couldn't quite fathom why.

So tonight he would forget about one Hermione Granger and all the dangers she posed to him, at least for a few hours.

* * *

The Three Broomsticks were crowded, but that was hardly surprising. Draco leisurely made his way in and took his time locating a seat. It wasn't really imperative to find Carys yet. She'd be working until midnight when they closed, anyway. Draco was only here because he felt like he might otherwise fall asleep and then wake up far too late to visit Carys, yet far too early to be productive. At least here the noise should be able to keep him awake.

Not many minutes after he'd sat down, a lovely young witch hesitantly began approaching him, biting her lip and obviously debating whether to speak to him or not. She couldn't be quite out of her teens yet. It was even possible that he'd taught her, although she'd clearly left school by now. Not that it made much of a difference that she was out of school. Minerva McGonagall would have his head--or another body part--if he should dare to dally with one of his former students. Again.

She seemed to have finally worked up the courage when she was rather firmly interrupted. "Oy, off with you. Go and find someone your own age to play with," Carys said to her, taking a seat on Draco's lap. "What took you so long, tiger?"

He couldn't help but snort a laugh at her address, but didn't comment on it. "What was that? I didn't think you were the jealous sort."

"When I don't see you in an age and a half, I'm not about to hand you over to some chit, am I?" She wasn't angry. She was never really angry, except when he didn't want to help fainting witches. Currently her eyes twinkled and her dimples were showing, although she seemed to be trying very hard to suppress her smile.

"Sorry about that," he said, encircling her waist with his arms. "I've been... worse, lately."

"You know not to worry about that," she said, putting her arms around his neck and studying his face. "You look tired. You want to go to my rooms for a nap?" As the current owner of The Three Broomsticks, Carys lived in her own private section of the inn. The proximity would've been more handy if she weren't so insistent on being a responsible owner who didn't sneak away for quickies.

"No, that's fine," he said, although it would probably have been a better idea to accept. "I'll simply wait here until you close up if that's all right with you."

"You know that isn't until midnight."

"I know." He bent forwards to kiss her. "Don't you have thirsty customers to attend to?"

She snorted and got up. "Always. Can I get you anything?"

"Maybe some of your own mead when you can find the time."

Unsurprisingly, he had his mead only a few minutes later, and he then proceeded to spend the next few hours watching his girlfriend work. As always, he was surprised at how she could even do it. How she could constantly be surrounded by loud, drunk, obnoxious people--some of which would very unsubtly attempt to cop a feel--and yet still be so happy and friendly to everyone she talked to. He'd have broken an arm or two by now if it had been him. In fact, he had half a mind to break one certain wizard's arm. Except _that_ might upset Carys. It would be bad for business, and she was nothing if not protective of her business. So the wizard kept his arm unbroken. For now.

* * *

Draco's head was swimming with the lack of sleep, the throbbing in his arm, and a slight excess of mead when Carys finally let them both into her private quarters that night. It wasn't the first time that had happened, though, so he didn't think anything of it, other than to make a mental note not to perform in ways that might make him sick. Being sick during sex was _definitely_ not one of his kinks. He barely allowed them to enter her bedroom before he grabbed her to kiss her and they tumbled towards her bed. She followed every bit as willingly as he'd expected, whilst helping him relieve them of their clothes.

It had been so long since he'd been naked with a woman. _So long._ Ever since Granger had arrived at Hogwarts, he'd been so busy fretting and he simply hadn't had the energy. But now he was here, and he'd be damned if he'd think of that blasted witch when he had soft, pretty, eager Carys here with him, under him, on him...

Carys tugged at his underwear, but he grabbed her hands and put them on his chest instead. "Not yet," he muttered, kissing her again. 

She complied, although she was a bit slow to hide her confused frown. He knew what she was thinking. It had been weeks and he didn't usually go for anyone else, so why wasn't he ready yet? He had absolutely no idea. And now his head was beginning to spin in a rather unpleasant way. Damn it. He really had had too much to drink. No matter, he could work through that. It wasn't like he'd never done it before. He flipped onto his back, and Carys quickly took the cue, straddling him with a knee on either side of his waist, but when she bent down to kiss him, he had to stop her only a moment later, as being on his back didn't make things better as he'd anticipated, but was rather speeding up the spinning of the room.

"Wait," he said with a rather pathetic groan.

She sat back on his thighs, looking extremely puzzled. "You're _that_ drunk on only a few mugs of my mead?"

He didn't know what to reply to that. He should've thought it impossible as well. "Lack of sleep, I suppose," he muttered.

She looked down. "Even so..."

He knew. How could he not know? He wasn't getting the least bit hard tonight. He'd had plenty of sex when feeling sick, or drunk, or tired, or even all three, so why the hell not now?! He _wanted_ to. He really, really, really wanted to. Having sex meant losing oneself in touch, taste and scent until bliss took over, followed by lovely dreamless sleep. It was his favourite way to exorcise the demons, at least for a little while.

Carys bit her lip and then looked him up and down. "I'm sure I can do something about that..." she said in a husky voice.

He sighed. He very much wanted that as well, but it wouldn't be fair to her to get her hopes up. Even though he _wanted_ her to do every naughty thing in the book to him, he simply wasn't rising to the occasion. "Unfortunately, I'm fairly certain you can't," he said. "Not tonight."

She sighed as well and moved off him, instead lying down next to him with her head on his chest. "You should probably see that Hogwarts nurse about the nausea," she said. "You didn't have enough to drink for that. And then there's the... well, that probably won't be a lasting problem. You did seem fairly distracted this evening."

_'That Hogwarts nurse' will just diagnose me with more of the crazies._ He was too exhausted to talk about his disagreements with Vera or listen to Carys theorise about why he couldn't get hard, though. "You know what? It must be this new potion I'm taking," he lied.

Carys lifted her head. "Potion?"

"Yes. You know. Like that other time."

She pulled back and leaned on her elbow to get a better look at him. "I thought you refused to take more of those potions."

"Vera convinced me to try again." The lie dripped smoothly from his tongue, as they always did. "Obviously this one is every bit as nasty as the last one. I'll stop taking it immediately."

Carys shook her head. "Don't do that."

Draco stared at her. "What?"

"These side-effects could be only temporary, you never know. And even if they aren't... well, it's not the end of the world, is it? There are more important things in life. Like being healthy. You said it yourself--you've been worse lately."

"Does this seem like being healthy to you?" Draco was all incredulous outrage and had half-forgotten that he wasn't actually taking any potions.

"It's at least healthier than... some things." She looked away.

Draco felt a powerful stab of betrayal. He'd thought she accepted him, but wasn't this just a sign that she too wanted to fix him and make him all better to fit her picture of what he _should_ be? "I see," he coldly said. "So it's all about at least giving the appearance that I'm fine, is that it?"

That earned him a glare. "Don't you dare take that tone with me, Draco Malfoy. You know perfectly well that I'll take you any way I can have you. But that does _not_ mean that I enjoy helplessly watching as you shut everyone out and attempt to destroy yourself in whichever way you feel like. Sometimes... I'm so afraid..." She blinked, having a hard time maintaining the stare through the rising tears. "I don't give a fig about appearances. I don't give a fig about a limp noodle. What I _do_ give a fig about is _you_!"

"And what will you do with me if I can't shag you?" He knew his voice was devoid of emotions, because that was how he felt at the moment--completely detached from the situation. And he really couldn't see what possible benefit there could be to this relationship without sex.

Carys blanched as she took his meaning, but then she shook her head. "Where do I get whatever else you can't give me?" she asked. "Sex, I can actually live without. Certain other things... not so easily." Then she got up and went to the bathroom, where he heard the water come on.

Rather than wait for her to finish so they could talk about all his many shortcomings and how her other lovers made up for them, he left.

* * *

In the days to come, Draco actually began feeling rather bad about how he'd treated Carys. Sometimes he really hated having a conscience. But at the same time, he didn't know what to do about it without making concessions he wasn't quite willing to make. He _didn't_ want to take those potions regularly, and he _wasn't_ up to fulfilling any needs of Carys's that weren't sexual. Up until that night, he'd thought their arrangement was perfect for both of them, but now... it would seem it wasn't. Carys, like almost any other witch out there, needed something from him that he couldn't give. He'd tried before and somehow it simply didn't work. He was broken in that aspect. Even when he had all the right feelings for a witch, he couldn't show them properly. He couldn't express them. He couldn't trust her with his secrets. He certainly couldn't ignore the ever-present pain that ultimately made him too self-absorbed for even the most compassionate witch to handle. They all thought that if only he'd drink more potions, he would be fine, but he knew better. He'd tried the numbing potions, and all it did was making him into some kind of living dead that _only_ felt the pain and the hollowness.

If only it were that easy.

Granger wasn't helping his worsening mood at all. At some point, she'd decided that the thing to do when he scowled at her was to tease and mock, and it drove him out of his mind. He hated being the object of other people's amusement. He hated the way she laughed when he inevitably reacted negatively to her. And most of all, he hated the way that her amusement didn't even make a good job of hiding her interest in him. He hated being the object of her attention, and he wanted to shout at her for not knowing any better. She had to have the worst bloody instincts in the whole world not to reject him on sight.

Draco didn't think he was being very conceited in thinking that he got more than his fair share of female attention. Clearly, it must be the self-loathing that acted like an aphrodisiac for all these women. He wasn't grateful for the attention, but he didn't make a habit of scoffing at it either. It was what it was. Yet, to have Hermione Granger of all people exhibiting the same signs that he'd seen in dozens of other women over the years... it disappointed him. Somehow he'd thought she'd be cleverer, or at least subtler. Harder to reach. Less like everyone else. In his mind, she had been aloof and unwilling to even talk to him. But then again, in his mind, she _knew_.

One thing Granger certainly wasn't, was the same person as when they'd been teenagers. She was somehow, in spite of ribbing him, quieter, and maybe a little bit sadder now. She championed her projects, but it was half-hearted compared to what it used to be. Sometimes he caught her stopped, in the middle of eating or writing something, or sometimes even in the middle of a conversation, simply staring blindly ahead. Other times, she'd laugh, but she would look like she would much rather cry.

And that was when she wasn't like everyone else, but a little bit like _him_ , and he found himself reluctantly sympathising with her in those moments. As others prodded her to continue or asked her if she was all right, he simply watched her, knowing exactly how she felt, and knowing that she wasn't all right. He didn't know if she had secrets weighing her down or if she was merely still heartbroken over Weasley, so he didn't know if she might one day heal, but he did know that right now she was hurting. Because she was like him, she suffered. But because she was unlike him, she tried to pretend that she didn't. He wanted to say something to her, to explain that pretending didn't make it go away, but how could he? He was spending every hour of every day trying to pretend that his secrets had nothing to do with her, when in fact his recent issues had everything to do with her. She was the key to his suffering, yet she didn't know it. She couldn't know it, because she would shatter. Even if he could somehow secure his own freedom and still tell her, she would shatter. She would break. The boundaries in her mind would become unclear and she would start confusing fantasy and reality, but that wouldn't matter much, because she'd probably suffer from blackouts and memory losses as well.

At least that was what the books all said. There was a chance that everything would be fine, of course. But it all depended on the skill of the brewer, the amount of time one waited before reversing the effects, and the general shock associated with the truth. So, basically, there was little to no hope. He'd brewed his memories into the potion at sixteen years old, it had now been a full decade since then, and the shock would be devastating to her. He could only imagine how Granger might feel about her reality, her history, her choices. She would almost definitely have chosen him, back then, perhaps changing the outcome of the very war by protecting him. She wouldn't have become engaged to Ron Weasley, and wouldn't have been so hurt by his new engagement. She probably wouldn't have been here at Hogwarts a decade later, licking her wounds. But what would have happened instead... he didn't know. Nobody would ever know. Probably, his crazies, which he would have caught even if he hadn't ever been with her, would have been too much for her as well. 

He needed to stop thinking about this. There was only one reality. He'd known for years already that her mind was best left alone, so why he was even visiting it again was beyond him.

Yet he couldn't stop himself from helplessly watch her be like him, and waver between sympathy at her damage and anger that after everything he'd done to keep her blissfully unaware of how bad it could've been, she couldn't even be happy.

Unfortunately, the sympathy was what made him make his biggest mistake with regard to her yet. He was sitting in the staffroom, fulfilling his obligation to at least appear sociable every once in a while--he had a rather unique contract, mostly due to his crazies--and trying very hard to ignore Dorcas and Granger merrily chatting, when he noticed a change in the dynamics. Glancing up, he found that Granger had paled, her eyes growing darker. Dorcas was working on another stupid Muggle-made project whilst talking, so he hadn't noticed, and Granger was obviously working hard to try to keep on pretending that nothing was amiss. Draco hadn't heard what they were talking about, so he wasn't certain what had triggered it. Something about families, he thought. But as Dorcas merely kept on going, her breathing became faster and more erratic.

"Enough!" Draco snapped, causing Dorcas to shoot him a confused look. Granger didn't even seem to register him, but was simply staring off into space, her lips slightly moving although no sound came out. It only took a moment before Dorcas noticed as well and jumped to his feet.

"Hermione!" Dorcas said, hurriedly moving around the table to grab her shoulder and give her a shake. "Hermione!"

"Stop it!" Draco growled, quite unable to deal with the damn squib's stupidity. "Go to the Hospital Wing. Tell Madam Vera. _Go!_ "

Dorcas looked both scared and confused, but after only a short hesitation, he did as asked.

Draco stayed seated for a few minutes, watching Granger. Only her lips still moved. He sighed. He'd have to be the one to move her if Dorcas's idea of trying to help was to _shake_ her. Bloody hell, what a clueless git.

"All right, Granger," he said calmly if not gently. This was such a bother. "It's anyone's guess whether you're registering anything at the moment, but I don't want you to panic. Panicking is bad, so don't, all right?" 

He paused as if waiting for a response, but he knew he wouldn't get one. Instead he got up and went over to stand in front of her. She didn't move. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, her pupils dilated. 

He sighed again and shook his head. "It's yourself doing this, Granger. It can happen even without magic, but be careful that you don't try to seal the world off. You could end up at St Mungo's for life, a breathing statue."

No response.

"I'm going to touch you now," he said. "And I really hope you don't react poorly to touch. I sometimes do, you know. One time I broke a bloke's nose and didn't even know about it until later. Personally, I'm rather fond of having an unbroken nose."

He reached out and took her hand. It was warm. He supposed that was always something. It was completely limp, though. He tried giving it a squeeze, but she didn't respond. What on earth could they have been talking about to make her need for escape so complete?

"Now walk," he said. "I don't fancy carrying you up all those floors, so let me lead you."

She followed with no resistance when he gave her hand a tug. Good. Maybe this might still be easy. Now he could only hope that they weren't spotted. How on earth was he supposed to explain her looking like she was under the Imperius Curse whilst he was holding her hand? 

Fortunately, however, as he began leading her up the stairs, they didn't see anyone. Only the paintings. Those bloody things might also spread gossip, but there was really nothing for it. She couldn't go on her own. About four floors up, her step faltered and he looked back to see her gaze flickering. He abruptly let go of her hand.

"Back from your little holiday, then?" he asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and continuing his walk without waiting for her.

She automatically tried to keep up. "Wh-what... did you do something to me?"

"Yes, absolutely!" he drily responded. "Your conversation with Dorky annoyed me so badly that I felt the need to hit you with the Confundus Charm."

"Why would y--oh. You didn't, did you? I remember now. You were... talking to me. Thank you. I didn't mean to be rude but I... couldn't... respond. Or maybe I could, I don't know. I didn't very much feel like it."

Draco glanced over at her. She looked genuinely confused and unhappy. Had this never happened to her before? "There's a word for what happened to you," he said. "But I don't like it. In fact, I don't like any of the words they use about these things. Suffice it to say that you and Dorky must've covered some topics that were very unpleasant for you."

She frowned. "I don't understand, though. It's never happened before."

Working from a theory that the less he knew, the less he had to be involved, he smoothly said, "You can tell Madam Vera all about it in a few minutes when you get to the Hospital Wing."

Granger smiled, the strain showing around her eyes. "This is new."

"What is?"

"You being nice to me."

He tensed. "I am not being nice to you."

"No, perish the thought!" Was she _mocking_ him? After he'd helped her? Now, wasn't that gratitude!

He clenched his jaw. "I'll just leave it to Dorky next time, then, shall I? It'll at least be fun to watch, what with his idea of delicate care being a _rough shake_. You'd probably punch his teeth out and then cry about it."

"Why is the idea of being nice to me so abhorrent to you?"

Because he couldn't risk her seeking him out, that was why. "Survival," he said without thinking, and then he could've hit himself.

"Survival?" she asked, frowning. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. Look, I'm certain you're a very nice witch and all that, but you really aren't my type."

"Do I need to be your _type_ to be your friend?"

He stopped walking and turned to her, his darkest, most unpleasant smirk firmly in place. "But it's not friends you want to be, now, is it?" Then as she quite predictably stared at him in horror, he pointed up and said, "The Hospital Wing is _that_ way. This is my stop." Then he left her without even a backwards glance to turn down the corridor that led to his quarters.

He didn't get much sleep that night. He was much too busy trying to avoid going to a very dark place.

* * *

Draco was drinking. It was his second least favourite way of dealing with his thoughts--his least favourite way was to share them--but it didn't seem like he had much choice these days. Carys was being more of a girlfriend than he could handle, and Vera refused to give him any potions. He'd brew his own, but even the people down at Dogweed and Deathcap wouldn't sell him what he needed. He could attempt to order something in from London, but he highly doubted that would be a success either. Even most of the illegal vendors were wary of doing business with him. Everyone was watching his every move, and he _hated_ it. He'd gained a few points for helping Granger that day, but only a few. Dorcas had been on his case about not seeing her all the way to the Hospital Wing. If the sodding bugger had been that concerned, he could've come back down to help after alerting Vera, but he hadn't, had he? Idiot. McGonagall had known better than to chastise Draco, but had instead expressed pleasure that he'd shown such gentleness towards someone he'd been so adamantly against coming here in the first place.

_Gentleness._

What had he been supposed to do, then? Leave and allow Dorcas to traumatise her further? Maybe that kind of behaviour was the key to truly being left alone. He should consider it for next time. But as of this moment, he was getting thoroughly pissed, and tomorrow he would go and teach his classes with a bloody hangover, and he would _still_ be the best damn Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher they'd had in decades.

There was a soft knock on his door. He ignored it. He wasn't obligated to make himself available tonight, so he didn't plan to. That door wouldn't open unless he could hear screaming or feel the heat of a roaring fire.

Or, of course, unless the knocker was cheeky enough to try the doorknob uninvited and he'd forgotten to lock it.

"Oh, you're here!" Granger said. She sounded cautious, but wasn't cautious enough not to enter and close the door behind her.

Why had he forgotten to lock it? Maybe he should have hid in his bedroom instead. At least then his office would have been empty, and she wouldn't have gone that far looking for him, would she? Oh, who was he kidding? She'd have invaded every single layer of his privacy if she'd felt the need to. "I'm unavailable," he curtly said, pouring himself another one.

"I see that," she said and tilted her head. "Do you always drink on a Tuesday?"

"I drink whenever the fuck I please," he responded. "What do you want?"

"Charming as always," she muttered. 

"Anything for you." Naturally, she didn't understand the depth of his sarcasm, but she identified the tone well enough to narrow her eyes at him.

"So drinking is your solution to your problems, huh?" she said, a bite to her words that he didn't think he'd ever heard before. He really didn't know her any longer, did he?

"What can I say, Granger?" he drawled, pouring himself yet another one. "Not all of us can withdraw from whatever bores us that easily. We need actual reasons to display our crazies." Except that Draco's reason to display his was that he didn't give a rat's furry arse about other people any longer and practically dared anyone to comment. He simply didn't want this to turn into some bonding moment where she explained what had happened and all that rubbish. He didn't care. He only wanted her gone.

She was staring at him now, but he made no effort to break the silence. Finally she said, "You know I wasn't merely bored."

"Do I, then?"

"Would you have helped me if it had been that trivial? I think not!"

He grimaced at that. She had a point. "If you want me to commiserate on having issues, don't bother. Everyone has them, and I honestly don't give a fuck about anyone else's problems."

"You're really a people person, aren't you?"

"I'm a bitter excuse for a wizard, waiting for my turn to die. What's it to you?"

She looked away. "I simply... hate seeing you that way."

He laughed, but he was far from amused. "So you're one of those witches. Well, that can be fun too, I suppose. Want to come over here and comfort me?" He hated even saying the words, and he knew she could tell from his sneer.

She tilted her head again. "Why do you do that? Why do you make such a crude come-on when the whole idea obviously repulses you."

It didn't repulse him. It scared him. The very idea of her touching him like that terrified him no end. "To make you go away, Granger. That's all. Won't you please go away?" He knew he sounded about as exhausted as he felt, but he didn't even care any longer. He just needed peace. Why wouldn't she let him have it?

"You know what I think?" she asked, obviously not going anywhere, but rather moving towards him.

"No, please do enlighten me." He sighed and took another swig. He was going to need it. Hopefully she would get it out of her system and then _leave_.

"I think I scare you."

He almost choked on his drink. This was becoming too dangerous for words. "Right. How was it? I hate myself and not you? Why don't we test that theory by, say, you leaving me alone for a very, very long time. If that makes me happier, then we can probably deduce that it's not me, it's you."

She snorted at that. "Oh, please. _I_ think that you've put the face of all of your demons on me, and that's why I terrify you so. It won't get better until you deal with them."

"Or you go away. That will work too."

"No! It won't! Don't you think I've watched you? I don't know what happened to you, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."

"I am your worst enemy."

"Rubbish."

"I betrayed you!" Fuck. That was saying too much. "I-I mean all of you. Everyone here." He looked down at his glass, for the moment quite unable to look at her.

He knew she watched him with those big brown eyes that saw too much as she quietly said, "And you still feel so very guilty for that, don't you?"

Every day, every night, he searched his brain for something--anything--else he could have done to somehow prevent the war, maybe prevent some of the death and destruction. He had never come up with a single thing, because it would have meant that his life, her life, his parents' lives, would all have been put in so much more immediate danger, and never would he have allowed that. So other people had died and her mind was forever altered. Because of his selfishness. And he wouldn't even change it if he could.

"What's to feel guilty about?" he said, feeling nausea set in. "I did what I did. No use in crying about it now." He studied his glass again, wondering how it had emptied itself once more.

"Then why won't you look at me?" She was coming closer. He didn't like it. "You really need to--"

"Do you know how many witches think they know what I need?" he abruptly asked, raising his eyes to hers again. "Almost every single one I meet. Do you know how many of them are right?"

She stopped and crossed her arms. "My guess would be almost every single one!"

That took him aback. "What?"

"Have you ever even _tried_ doing anything you didn't want to do? Simply to see if it might work?"

"You have no idea what I've tried in order to shut people up, Granger," he said, deciding that pouring another drink was a good choice.

"Really? Truly _tried_? You didn't just make one half-hearted attempt and then say, 'Sorry, this won't work--here, let's have sex instead'?"

He had to fight not to gape at her. The gall of this woman. "You're so clever, aren't you?"

"Yes, so I've been told many times. By people far more trustworthy than you."

"All right." He put down the glass. "Then what do you propose, Little Miss Know-It-All?"

She sniffed. "You can stop with the condescension, for one thing. But why don't you try facing your issues, instead of running away from them?"

"Facing my issues? That's your big suggestion? I'm rather disappointed. I'd have thought you could at least come up with something a little less cliché."

She took the last couple of steps to bring her up to his desk and put her hands down on it. "Face _me_."

He narrowed his eyes at her. She wasn't nearly fuzzy enough around the edges for this. "And how do you suggest I do that?"

She straightened again. "I'm not completely sure. It depends. What is it that frightens you so much?"

He slowly rose, taking some pleasure in how she warily eyed him. "What frightens me?" he asked, feeling a strange calmness come over him. That calmness was in itself a warning sign, but he was beyond caring. He'd asked her to leave _repeatedly_ and now she'd wasted her chance. If she wanted to challenge him so badly, then he would oblige her.

"If you're hoping to intimidate me--" she began.

He leisurely walked around his desk, making her abruptly stop talking as he reached her. "Then what? I've succeeded?" he mocked. He looked down at her. She wasn't actually that petite, but she was still shorter and slighter than him. He had the physical advantage, but that shouldn't matter if she had her wand. Would she really be stupid enough to walk unarmed into an unstable wizard's private rooms? He thought not.

She might be stupid enough not to want to _use_ her wand on him, though.

Unexpectedly she squared her shoulders. "Go ahead," she said. "Do your worst. Tell me how you don't want me or want to be friends. I don't care. You can ridicule me until you're blue in the face."

"Why?"

Her eyes softened a fraction. "Because you held my hand when I couldn't find my way out. I want to help you find your way as well."

What sentimental drivel was that? Finding one's way? Positively disgusting. He opened his mouth to say so, but the words wouldn't come. Those damn expressive eyes of hers were rooting him to the spot and completely silencing him.

It must be the alcohol that had finally hit.

He tried again, but not a sound would come. He shook his head in frustration, to clear it, and made an aggravated sound. She immediately stepped closer and put her hand on his chest. "Draco, it's ok."

What was ok? What was even happening? He had no idea, because suddenly he was pulling her closer and covering her mouth with his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short note on the mental issues portrayed in this chapter:
> 
> The term Draco doesn't like for what happened to Hermione is _Dissociation_ , which is something I've never had to go through personally. I have however witnessed it at varying degrees in others, and while most of the time it just seems like the other person is only daydreaming or ignoring you, it can be rather scary when they simply shut off and stare ahead. It's a coping mechanism in times of high levels of stress (or even boredom).
> 
> Draco... is me on a bad day. XD No, of course not. He's not my self-insert. But I do try to use my first-hand experience with depression to try and put words on Draco's feelings. Maz at one point called him _melodramatic_ and that fits well enough. To be depressed can indeed at times mean becoming completely self-absorbed and melodramatic. Not to mention incredibly short-tempered with all those annoying optimists. ;) It also can mean being self-destructive, and Draco is nothing if not that.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione had a headache. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence these days, but this morning it was worse. She hadn't slept well at all with far too many thoughts and scenarios running through her head, and now she was paying the price.

Draco Malfoy had kissed her last night. _Kissed_ her. At first it had seemed almost like a way to shut her up, but then he'd deepened the kiss and it had _almost_ seemed like he was completely full of it when he said he didn't want her... right until he'd shoved her away, wearing an extremely unflattering look of horror on his face.

Surprise at what had happened hadn't actually been the source of her sleepless night. Not really. It was very possible that she wasn't as traditionally pretty as some of the other women Malfoy had something going on with, but given how he seemed to like variety, she'd figured his gaze would land on her sooner or later. She'd even wanted it to land there. She wasn't as pure and naïve as everyone, including Malfoy, seemed to think. The draw for her was that unlike Darius, Malfoy didn't seem very interested in anything beyond maybe a night or two and, quite frankly, she could use that. She hadn't been touched in so very long and those dreams she kept having were highlighting how much she missed the physical aspect of a relationship, if not the emotional mess. She'd thought that if it happened, then maybe it could be something where everyone walked away happy after getting exactly what they wanted and nothing more.

She supposed there was still a chance that everything could work out like that.

It was just... she didn't like the way he was mocking her attraction. She'd put a brave face on it, but it was rather humiliating to have him notice her interest in him and then use it to try and hurt her. It was also rather humiliating to have him react to his own instincts the way he had and then visibly recoil from her afterwards. He hadn't even spoken to her. Hadn't told her to leave. He'd simply stared at her and then turned and walked into his bedroom, locking the door so she couldn't follow.

What had he expected her to do? Go after him and try to _force_ herself on him? That was fairly insulting, and also worrisome if based on his experiences with other women.

Yet, at the same time, she wasn't about to give up on trying to help him. That day, when Darius had begun talking in great detail about a personal family matter, something had happened in Hermione's head. Like the time she'd fainted, suddenly things had shifted out of focus, and it was as if a thread had been severed inside her, making a part of her float away. Only this time, she'd stayed conscious. She'd vaguely watched at least most of what had happened, including Malfoy's quite unexpected kindness. Once she'd managed to fight her way back, he'd returned to his old self, but whilst she'd been at her most vulnerable, he'd been... compassionate. Almost sweet.

She still didn't understand what had happened. When told the full story, or at least as much of it as Hermione felt comfortable sharing, Madam Vera had called it _dissociation_ and said that it happened sometimes when a person needed to protect themselves. Yet, it had never happened before. Wouldn't it have happened before? _Shouldn't_ it have happened before? Madam Vera didn't seem to think so. She'd said a body could be unpredictable and Hermione had probably run out of the resources needed for her usual defences.

She'd given Hermione the name and address of someone in London and recommended Hermione travel by Floo down from Hogsmeade to go and talk to him once or twice a week.

Hermione had thanked Madam Vera, seeing as that was only polite, but she had no intention of going. It had happened _once_. Maybe if she made it a habit to dissociate or faint, like she'd done down in Hogsmeade for still completely unknown reasons, then there would be a reason to go. As it was, she was merely under a lot of stress and only needed to learn to cope better.

But one thing she wasn't coping very well with was this headache. So up she went for yet another visit to the Hospital Wing. She'd been here a little too often for her own liking lately, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

It was still very early, but fortunately Madam Vera was up. Hermione could hear her rustling about in her supply room. There were screens set up around one bed, but other than that, the place looked deserted. Hermione hesitantly took another step forward but was halted by a cheery, "Be right with you!"

Oh, right. Madam Vera had something in place so she could hear when people entered. Hermione always seemed to forget that. She sat down on the edge of a bed, waiting.

A few minutes later Madam Vera came out, wiping her hands. "So, what can I do for you?"

"Headache," Hermione simply said.

"Hmm." Madam Vera said, peering into her eyes. "Anything else? Any tension or soreness?"

"No, just a headache, Madam--"

"Please, just Vera. You aren't one of the students."

"All right... Vera..."

"Any worries?"

"Maybe a few. I don't know. I didn't sleep very well last night."

"I'll get you a few potions so you won't have to come here so often, but do try to find ways to avoid the strain that causes these."

"Of course."

Vera disappeared off to find the potions just as one of the screens shielding that one bed was noisily pushed aside, scraping over the floor in a manner that made Hermione involuntarily cry out as the sound painfully pierced her ears and made her head pound worse. She scowled over at the offender, only to completely stop in her tracks. Malfoy. Wearing only trousers and glaring at her before he sat down and began pulling on socks.

"Um, good morning?" she ventured. He wasn't exactly the first person she'd thought she'd find in a bed up here this morning. Maybe he'd had a lot more to drink last night? Or maybe he couldn't sleep either?

"Would've been better if your nattering hadn't woken me up," he snapped. Apparently he was cheery in the mornings.

She tried very hard and failed not to stare at him out of the corner of her eye as he pulled on a shirt and, without closing it first, bent over to pull on his boots, the movement of the necklace he was wearing drawing her eyes to the very appealing image of his chest. His torso was another part of him that didn't make any sense. It had become quite clear to Hermione over these past weeks that Malfoy spent most of his free time sleeping around and doing whatever else he needed to in order to forget whatever was haunting him. Never had she seen even the tiniest hint that he engaged in any kind of physical activity that wasn't sex. Yet here it was... a body that certainly wasn't unpleasant on the eyes.

"Look your fill yet, or do you want me to leave it open a while longer?" he asked, getting to his feet to button his shirt.

She quickly looked away, her cheeks flaming. He was still mocking her. Trying to save some of her dignity she said, "I didn't mean to stare. I simply couldn't shake this idea... that maybe you didn't use to wear shirts."

She sensed that he stilled. "What?"

"I know. It's silly. How would I know what you wore or didn't wear under the robes I always saw you in?" She glanced at him and was surprised to see that he'd paled.

Then he sneered. "Maybe you spent far too much time thinking about me naked back then as well," he said and would've probably stormed off if Vera hadn't chosen that very moment to come back out with the potions for Hermione and to request to have a word with Malfoy.

Hermione left. She had a lesson soon and, besides, it wasn't _that_ pleasant to be viciously mocked.

* * *

Hermione decided to give Malfoy some space after that. Not only had he made his wishes abundantly clear, and trying to change his mind was exhausting and rather futile, but she also had to focus more on her teaching duties these days. She'd worked on fitting the House Unity project themes in where everyone's lesson plans would allow for it with a minimal overlap, and that hadn't been very easy. It was now spread out over the second half of the year, with each teacher devoting pockets of time to whoever needed it. The students had already been put together in groups of one from each House--which had almost caused a riot--and had then been given a few weeks to loosely define what their projects were to be about as well as how they meant to achieve their goal with their combined strengths. They were expected to do any preliminary work in good time.

It was becoming more and more apparent that Hermione had miscalculated the level of opposition to the project slightly. Since she'd done her very best to group people with only those they shared subjects with, she'd now gone to each and every teacher and requested that those groups be forced at all times, even for other tasks. It had visibly caused extra levels of friction, but Hermione felt optimistic that they'd eventually get used to it and _get to work_. It wasn't, however, until McGonagall got up in the Great Hall and announced that anyone dissatisfied with their group would also be required to eat and share dormitories with each other that things quieted down on the surface. But everyone was still seething.

Malfoy never commented, but she _knew_ what he was thinking and she resented it very much. It was still a good idea, damn him. A great idea, even! The very fact that they got so much opposition only _proved_ that the children needed to learn how to get along across Houses!

But another thing that was rapidly becoming apparent was that the majority of the children that were dissatisfied and fighting were Gryffindor and Slytherin. She should have predicted that, and in fact she had, but considering Malfoy's reluctance to even talk to her, she couldn't really do anything about it at this time. She could only wait and vainly hope that the problems would disappear on their own.

* * *

By the time the next weekend came, Hermione was exhausted. She had no idea why she'd ever thought taking a sabbatical from her regular life in order to teach for a year would be _peaceful_ when it was anything but. She was in fact so completely drained that on Friday afternoon she went for a nap, and that nap lasted until Saturday morning. After a big breakfast, Hermione then marked her students' work and adjusted her lesson plan, completely freeing up her Sunday.

Feeling rather pleased with herself for being so productive, she hesitantly went down to the staffroom. She'd avoided it ever since she'd ogled Malfoy in the Hospital Wing, but she rather wanted company. Fortunately, Malfoy wasn't there and Darius was, and he at least seemed pleased to see her.

"I was afraid Malfoy had scared you off for good," he said.

Hermione grimaced. "He does that a lot?"

"Yes."

Then maybe he didn't simply hate her. That was some small consolation, she supposed. "So, what are you doing?" she asked, sitting down.

"Boring myself." Darius frowned at the gadget of the week. "This here is rather useless."

"You didn't make the Muggle stereo work yet?"

"No, not yet." He sighed. "Who am I kidding? None of it ever works, and the castle is always _far_ too quiet when the children aren't running about."

Hermione blinked. She'd never before seen Darius in a bad mood and she didn't really know how to cheer him up. "Then let's go somewhere that isn't as quiet?" she suggested.

He glanced at her. "What? Hogsmeade?"

"Why not?"

"I told you that I'm not all that welcome down at The Three Broomsticks."

"Then we'll go to The Hog's Head."

"I can't bring a respectable witch to Hog's Head."

She couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Oh, please. I visited it several times as a teenager. It can't have got that much worse."

He snorted. "It certainly didn't get better."

Hermione mock-pouted at him. "I can't believe I'm asking you out and you're turning me down!"

At that he quirked an eyebrow. "You're asking me out? What, on a date? And you want it to go to _The Hog's Head_?"

She sighed overly dramatically. "Never mind. Just a thought."

He shot her a dubious look whilst scratching his head. "You're as bored as I am, aren't you?"

She could barely suppress her amusement at that highly accurate assessment. "Maybe a little bit."

Apparently her ploy to cheer him up _and_ alleviate her own boredom had worked because his face broke into a grin. "Ok. We'll go to The Hog's Head. But don't say I didn't warn you. Come on."

She jumped to her feet. "Wait! Can I go and get ready first?"

"It's The Hog's Head. What's to get ready for?"

"Going out?" Now she grinned at him.

He rubbed his hand over his eyes and shook his head. "Right. I forgot how you suddenly decided after weeks and weeks of being perfectly uninterested in me that we should go out on a date. To The Hog's Head."

She tilted her head and couldn't help but tease, "You keep saying that name, I'm going to think that you're growing fond of it."

He snorted at her again. "Are you getting ready, or..?"

"Certainly." She began moving towards the door. "What do you think I should wear to blend in?"

He stared at her for a moment and then blinked. "You... ah... I don't think you want to blend in."

"Why not?"

"You might catch a cold."

"Why--oh. Huh." She scrunched up her nose. "I don't think I brought anything like that."

" _That_ is your main concern?" He stared at her.

She shot him a brilliant smile. "I'll see what I can dig up!"

Then she hurried up to her room to get ready.

* * *

Almost an hour later, Hermione was all but flying down the stairs, even chancing a wild jump when they suddenly decided to shift. She hadn't meant to take quite that long to get ready, but first she'd had to work out what to wear, and then there were shoes and hair and make-up and jewellery and perfume and... ok, _maybe_ she'd gone a bit overboard--even using spells to at least temporarily make a few of her accessories more feminine--but she was so sick of feeling like some kind of machine. She was tired of never having any fun. She hated feeling like her life was already over.

Darius was fun . She only hoped he'd bothered to wait for her.

She stumbled on a step and had a fright as she almost fell face first down stairs long and steep enough to break anyone's neck, but at the last second, she managed to grab onto the banister and right herself. Maybe she wasn't quite in _that_ much of a hurry. Finishing the stairs at a more leisurely pace, she was relieved to see that Darius was waiting for her down by the doors. She drew up the hood of her cloak just as he saw her coming down.

He didn't comment on the wait. "Ready?" he simply asked, and she nodded.

They walked most of the way in silence but as they passed The Three Broomsticks, Darius hesitated.

"I suppose we could go in," he said. "I mean, I don't believe they'll deny me service. And most people don't know me at all."

She grabbed his arm and tugged. "No, let's do what we planned." She was far from eager to run into Malfoy anyway. It would go against her mission to feel pretty and happy to have him make snide remarks at her.

Darius reluctantly followed, and when they reached The Hog's Head, she began to see what he'd been going on about. Simply looking from the outside, she hadn't quite remembered that the windows were _that_ grimy. It didn't get any better on the inside. The floor was made of packed dirt--even though there were supposedly floor boards underneath--and nothing looked like it had ever seen soap. Including the patrons. She had to suppress a shudder.

"Not too late to turn back," Darius said. She might've taken him up on that if he hadn't looked so bloody amused.

Instead she stuck her nose in the air and walked in like she owned the place. When she found a table, she released the clasp on her cloak and discreetly covered her chair with it before sitting down and looking expectantly at Darius, who was simply staring at her.

"What?" She was feeling defensive and scowled at him before glancing down her own front. Her dress was, in fact, quite modest. Then again, he'd been staring at her face. Had her lipstick smudged? She reached for the mirror in her handbag, but upon closer inspection still saw nothing wrong. She scowled at him. " _What?_ "

He finally seemed to snap out of it and smoothly sat down on the other chair belonging to the sticky table she'd chosen. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't believe I've ever seen you look quite that... pretty... before."

She frowned. Was that even a compliment? "Thank you?"

"No, that sounded wrong. I'm sorry. I'm... just..." He grimaced. "I'm just so very suave, as you can probably tell."

She couldn't help but smile at that. "I'd expect nothing less from a gentleman taking me to such a refined establishment," she teased.

He didn't laugh as she'd expected. Instead he said, "You really haven't seemed all that interested in me, but now I admit I'm a little confused."

Suddenly this began to seem a lot more complicated than she wanted it to be. "We're friends, right?" she ventured, fighting back a wince at how weak that sounded. She very much liked Darius, but she was still trying to get over her ex. She wasn't ready to even consider being with someone else for anything but a bit of fun. Darius seemed like the sort of man who might get hurt by any 'bit of fun' that went beyond friends, so she had no intentions of taking it further.

"Yes, of course." His expression was fairly unreadable for a moment, but then he cracked one of his regular teasing smiles. "Then what can I get you? I hear their filthy mugs really add to the taste."

She couldn't help the way her toes curled in disgust at that mental imagery. "Er. Don't they have some bottled ale or something? Butterbear? Anything nobody's actually _touched_ , thank you."

This time he laughed out loud and promised to do his best to find something she could safely drink.

As Darius left her alone to get drinks, Hermione idly looked around. The atmosphere here was quite different from over at the Three Broomsticks. When people laughed here, it was a far cruder sound. When they talked, it was louder and meaner. Even the background music from the Wizarding Wireless Network somehow seemed rougher and more jarring.

It was all worth it, though, simply to avoid-- 

She froze. Someone blond had entered. No, that had to be a coincidence. There must be other blond wizards--even with that slightly shaggy haircut. He turned and she couldn't quite suppress a groan. The chance of other wizards having the exact same _face_ were probably rather low. What was Malfoy even doing here? Why wouldn't he go to the pub where he had a thing with the barmaid?

He looked up and spotted her, and she immediately looked away, searching for Darius instead. Darius was making his way back, but also seemed to have spotted Malfoy.

"Interesting," Darius said, placing a bottle in front of her and taking his seat again. "Didn't expect to see him here. But from the look on your face, neither did you. That explains a lot about tonight actually." He took a swig from his own bottle.

"Is it really that much of a surprise if I want to avoid him?" she muttered.

"No, not at all. He seems to turn a special kind of unpleasant around you. I'd avoid him too."

"Then what?"

"I don't have magic, Hermione, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid. I've seen the way you look at him. You very much wish he were nicer to you."

"Of course I wish he were nicer to me!"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it." He made that statement far too matter-of-factly.

She looked away, her cheeks burning. Did everyone know, then? Why did they even care? Her interest was harmless. It had simply been far too long since she'd had any 'bit of fun' and Draco Malfoy very much seemed like the type who could supply that kind of fling. But he hated her and had recoiled the one time he'd kissed her, so it was very high on the list of Most Unlikely Things To Ever Happen.

"I think I've said it before but it bears repeating--you're far too good for him."

"Yes, well, maybe I don't want to be," she muttered. She had only meant for it to be a personal observation, but from the startled look on Darius's face, he'd heard. Oops. "I-I only mean," she said, trying to save face, "it's not always easy to live up to the idealised image people have of me."

He shot her a thoughtful look and then slowly said, "If you want to go and talk to him, then by all means..."

"No! I was avoiding him, remember? And I'm here with you."

"As friends. And I manage quite well without a babysitter."

"That's not--"

"Besides, if ever there was a time to get him out of your system, it's now. He must be quite desperate for a diversion to be _here_."

That stung and she could think of nothing to say but, "Thanks."

Darius made a growling sound. "He's not exactly a fan of yours, Hermione, whether you like it or not. Some of us would feel very lucky to get the interest of a witch of your calibre, but not him. Might as well be realistic about it. Looking like that, he would probably have you, but he wouldn't be grateful. Not in the least. And he'd toss you out afterwards." Darius got to his feet, finishing his ale. 

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Back."

"But--"

"We'll have to do this some other time. From the way he noticed us too, it looks like tonight I'm only going to be a prop in your little play and I'm really not in the mood for that. Good luck whatever you choose to do, yeah? See you tomorrow." Then he left.

Hermione was left staring down at her hands, her entire evening gone down the drain. And why did Darius have to sound like this happened a lot with witches around Malfoy?

"Lover's quarrel?" a dry and all too familiar voice asked. "I have to say I'm surprised. I'd have thought someone as simple as Dorky would be easy to keep happy. What does that say about you?"

Her fists clenched. He couldn't ever stop doing that, could he? She got to her feet, picked up her cloak, and then she fled the pub.

* * *

Hermione didn't really have a plan for where she was going, she simply couldn't stand being near Malfoy at the moment. Nor did she want to completely lose face by showing up at the school mere minutes after Darius. So instead of going to the main road, she ran the opposite way, entering a part of Hogsmeade she'd never been in before. The buildings here were lower, darker, and the road narrowed into little more than a path. The shops had names that Hermione had never seen before, and they seemed to be carrying rather... odd... things at times.

Obviously she'd entered a less savoury part of town.

At this very moment, however, she didn't care. All she wanted was to keep moving. She couldn't go back to her rooms yet. Sitting at home, staring at a wall, was too depressing and she couldn't do it any longer. She wanted to be out and about. Even if that meant only taking a brisk walk through the worst part of Hogsmeade after all the effort she'd put into her looks.

She heard a sound behind her and froze in her tracks, her fingers closing around her wand. "Show yourself," she said, turning around.

"Scared?" Malfoy calmly asked from the shadows. "Then this is the wrong place for you to be."

She huffed out a breath and let go of the wand. "I'll be fine. No one's here." She turned her back on him again, meaning to go on, but his voice stopped her.

"That's where you're wrong," he said. "People around these parts are nothing if not good at hiding and watching. You're not safe. Go back to the main road."

She sniffed, quite put out with him tonight. " _I'm_ not safe? Then what about you? Or are you the kind of man that thinks your mighty penis will protect you?"

He laughed. It was a soft but mirthless sound. "I'm protected by my deeds, witch," he then said.

"Your deeds? You never killed anyone. You never did much of anything, really. If anything, I have more deeds to _my_ name."

"Trust me, your morals would prevent you from any act that would earn their respect. I have no morals left and you have no idea what I've become capable of. I repeat, go back to the main road."

"Why don't you simply leave me?"

"You don't want to know what will happen if I leave you."

She eyed the buildings around her. If he was telling the truth, then it was likely that the only reason she hadn't encountered anyone yet was because of his presence. How annoying. In some places it truly didn't matter that she was Hermione Granger, War Hero and close friend of Harry Potter. She could be overpowered and silenced if enough people wished to hurt her. If someone they respected or feared on another level was here, however... but someone all bark and no bite like Draco wouldn't be that person, would he?

Abruptly, she turned around and began walking back, passing Malfoy on her way.

"You're welcome," he breathed.

She whirled on him, her teeth bared. "You expect me to be _thankful_ for you ruining my evening?!"

"Certainly, if your idea of a nice evening out is to walk into a seedy part of town and--"

"You know very well that's not what I meant!"

He frowned. "So you blame your lover boy leaving on my very presence?"

"Why were you even _there_?"

"Because I'm free to go wherever I please, Granger. I hardly expected you either."

"And _why_ , when seeing me upset, was your first instinct to try to upset me further? Can't you simply leave me be? I stopped trying to talk to you, what more could you _possibly_ want?!"

He looked at her quietly for a while before saying, "You're right. I should remember that your presence isn't _meant_ as an insult to me."

She stared at him. Simply stared. He was never going to apologise or even act like a compassionate human being, was he? "Why did you kiss me?" she quietly asked.

His expression was nothing if not closed. "I don't believe we need to discuss that."

"Oh, but we do. If you hate me so much, why did you do it?"

He grimaced. "I knew you'd misinterpret it. Good girls always do."

'Good girls'? Right then she hated that label more than anything and she burned to tell him that, but she knew he'd only laugh at her and tell her that she had no idea what it was like to be bad. Like she didn't have secrets as deep and dark and shameful as he, or probably anyone in this part of town, did. She gritted her teeth to keep all that in and only said, "Then set me straight."

"It's fairly simple, actually. I have a weakness when it comes to women. Physically. I merely did what I would normally do with a woman because I was too pissed to stop myself in time."

"Fine. Let's say that's the truth. Why does it matter so much that it was me? Why was there even a need to stop? You didn't seem to hate it."

He paused as if taken aback that she would so boldly show her disappointment in his rejection. It almost made her laugh out loud. What exactly did he think she was risking? "You're not my kind of witch," he finally said, his words so soft that coming from another person she might have believed he cared about her feelings.

She took a deep breath. Interestingly enough, his words didn't hurt in the least. She'd been expecting them. And somehow, the fact that he was acting exactly as she'd expected calmed her. "You know what I think?" she quietly asked.

"No, but I suspect that I will in a few moments."

The corners of her mouth drew up in a sardonic smile that didn't feel like her. "I still think you fear me more than you hate me, and now I think I know why."

"I'm sure you do."

"I think you like me." For a moment he only stared, and that moment was all she needed to push on. "I think it terrifies you to think about what that could mean. I think the thought of being kind to me, kissing me, getting intimate with me, is positively petrifying to you, because you have no idea what could happen. You'd much rather destroy yourself than give anyone else the power to destroy you."

The darkness shielded his expression too well for her to properly read it, but he was standing very, very still. "Rather dramatic tonight, aren't we?" he finally said in a patronising tone. "Not to mention perhaps a bit full of ourselves."

Again, nothing she hadn't expected. The dark smile that was feeling more like a grimace intensified and she took a step towards him. "Prove it."

"And how does someone prove something like that?"

"You could kiss me without going into a panic. It's dark here, so you won't even have to look at me."

He tensed. "Look, Hermione..." He cut off and muttered a few foul words. " _Granger_. I find this... dare... to be rather childish."

"Yes, certainly much more childish than your constant need to verbally put me down."

"Obviously you must like it."

Her dark smile turned into an even darker laugh. "Not accepting the challenge, then? I thought so." She turned her back on him and began walking towards the main road again. 

For quite a while, she didn't hear him following, but then she heard the rustling of clothes and the hurried steps signalling that he was gaining on her with a vengeance. He probably wanted to yell at her some more. She was beyond caring and merely kept walking. Then suddenly she was grabbed and shoved into the narrow space between two buildings, momentarily frightening her and making her think it was someone else. When she looked up, however, it was him. Only, he looked angrier than she could remember ever seeing him.

"A challenge?" he spat. "Fine. Don't come crying to me." 

Then he bent down and she steeled herself for something hard, punishing, bruising, and far from pleasant. A kiss that would be designed to stop her from ever wanting more of them from him. A warning not to challenge him again. As he lowered his head, she had to work very hard not to pull away. She refused to flinch!

But the hard kiss never came. Instead she got warm, firm lips pressing against her own as his hand moved up to cradle her neck. The difference from what she expected stunned her into standing completely still as he ran his thumb over her lower lip and lightly press it down, before he kissed her again, deeper this time.

Pure, searing lust shot through her, making her dizzy as he touched his tongue to hers. She instinctively arched into him although she tried to stay at least a little mentally detached so it wouldn't completely blindside her when he stopped and delivered a cruel comment. That had to be his plan. She could imagine no other reason that he would... he would... how had her fingers suddenly found his hair? It was so soft. A little tangled, though, so when she buried her fingers deeply to comb through it, she accidentally pulled hard enough to make him curse. Well, that served him right for kissing her like... like he meant it! He drew back a bit, but she wouldn't have it and pulled him closer again to tease his lower lip. He groaned against her mouth and lifted her up to grind against her, proving that he most certainly wasn't unaffected.

Good. Maybe he'd be the one to heed the warning, then.

Rather suddenly, however, he let go of her body to grab her wrists and pull her hands off him as he stepped back. She fought a pout and instead merely looked at him, waiting for the killing blow.

He cleared his throat and looked away for a second as if to compose himself, but then the most ominous smirk slowly appeared on his face. "Really, Granger?" he asked a little hoarsely. "You want to get into that here?"

A blush stained on her cheeks as she realised what he meant. They were in some kind of alley, which she couldn't see very clearly, but it was now slowly occurring to her that the place _reeked_ of all sorts of waste. She stubbornly stuck up her nose at him. "I was merely obliging you, as I thought this was your style."

At that his smirk widened. "I'm sure our onlookers appreciate that." He nodded towards the end of the alley where she only barely could make out the grey outline of one person in a doorway and another one in a second floor window. 

So he'd had his whole stage set up. "You knew they were there."

"Of course. I already told you. They're good at hiding and watching. They probably think you're from the brothel around the corner."

Hermione wished she could say she was surprised, but she wasn't. Crushingly disappointed that he'd only kissed her like that for show, yes. Surprised, no. This was exactly what she'd expected and, frankly, exactly what she deserved for goading him into kissing her in spite of himself. "Of course. And that explains what _you_ were doing around these parts, doesn't it?" she said, before she very deliberately stuck her nose in the air and turned her back on him to make her way back to the castle.

* * *

Back at the castle and inside her office, Hermione closed the door and then leaned on it, trying to work through what had just happened. She simply couldn't figure it out. She couldn't figure _him_ out. Why did he insist on treating her horribly at every turn and then kiss her like that? It was becoming more and more apparent that the problem really wasn't her, it was him. She'd been right that he was deliberately trying to push her away. She might even have been right about why. One thing was for certain, _if_ she'd been right about why, he was only going to get worse from now on. He would be ruthless. Especially if he thought it was working.

She heard Malfoy's firm footfall moving past her door. She didn't know if he knew where her office and quarters were located--although she was fairly certain he did--but walking past her office was the fastest way for him to get to his own rooms. She'd always wondered why he had his office here on the sixth floor, but had yet to manage to ask someone without seeming a bit too interested. She knew why she was here--as nothing but a temporary replacement she hadn't wished to invade what had seemed like such a personal space, so she'd gone to McGonagall and requested to be put somewhere else. The request had been granted, but Hermione had been warned that all the best offices were in use even if the private rooms that came with them weren't always. If she didn't like being so close to Malfoy--a factor of unpleasantness that McGonagall had actually addressed--the next office in line in terms of comfort would be one on the second floor, which had fallen into disrepair some years ago. So far Hermione had been perfectly comfortable up here. Malfoy kept to himself most of the time and the rooms up here were actually even a bit bigger than the regular Arithmancy professor's had been.

She heard Malfoy's door open and close. And then there was silence. Nothing but silence. She didn't even know how long she stood like this, listening to nothing and feeling like she was going deaf.

Finally she'd had it, and before she could consider what she was doing and why, she'd opened her own door and marched over to knock on his. She half-expected him to either ignore her or yell at her to go away, but he didn't. He opened the door as if he'd been expecting her.

He probably had, the prat.

She stared at his politely distant face, willing herself to speak but not quite managing it. Finally, she simply gave up and turned to leave. He'd probably just be horribly mean no matter what she said anyway.

She'd only taken a single step when she felt his fingers close around her arm and she was pulled into the room, stumbling a bit as he let go and the momentum brought her further. She blinked as she experienced that slight shift in her vision she sometimes got around him, and then whirled around. "Malfoy! What on earth do y--"

He closed the gap between them in few long steps, and then covered her mouth with his. Her eyes widened even as his warmth and scent had an almost hypnotic effect on her. Damn her for reacting so strongly to him. It wasn't fair! What was he up to now? She'd thought she knew his game, but this was quite unprecedented, to say the least. He drew back, but quite fed up with him, she decided not to let him have all the control, and used all her might to pull him back. He clearly hadn't been expecting it and stumbled against her, forcing her to take a few steps back to not lose her own balance. And then, suddenly, he was back in control, guiding her until she felt his desk hit the back of her thighs. She gasped as he lifted her up to sit on it, his lips moving over her cheek and down her neck whilst he was deftly running his hands up her thighs, bringing her dress with them. It was rapidly becoming hard for her to even think coherently. Even if he didn't mean it, he had such a talented mouth. And hands. The merest brush of his hand against her thigh had her swallow a whimper.

It really was unfair. How could he be such a prat and still make her want him so desperately? He was probably only playing with her. As usual.

"Malfoy, what--?!" she valiantly tried once more.

"Hush," he muttered against her skin, making her blood hum with want.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. "No, explain."

"You came looking for this, didn't you?" He pushed her back until she was lying down flat on the desk beneath him. Oh, Merlin, it felt nice. No, it felt perfect. It felt right. It felt like exactly what she needed tonight. It even felt... familiar.

"No... I didn't..." she weakly protested. The truth was, she had no idea what she'd been looking for.

"Couldn't just leave me alone to wank in peace, could you? You had to come here, had to haunt me some more." He pulled off his own shirt, leaving her to stare at that chest she'd been lusting for and that necklace of his that seemed to show the current phase of the moon. It was glowing faintly white in the semi-darkness of the room.

"Not a werewolf, are you?" she asked, a bit apprehensive.

He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "No. Strictly a curiosity that's sometimes handy for potion brewing. You won't have to panic if I bite you." He bent to nibble at a strangely particular sensitive spot at the base of her neck, making her moan and cling onto him before she could catch herself.

His hands never still, he'd almost divested her of all of her clothes before she could think of anything else to say. Yet when she felt the clasp on her bra give way, she couldn't help holding onto the small protection that piece of garment gave her.

He hissed. "Don't change your mind. Not now. Not _after_ you've already driven me beyond sanity with all your little looks and those lips. Merlin, those lips..."

"Then be honest with me. Why do you suddenly want me?" She was pushing it. She'd die if he decided to stop.

"It's not sudden," he whispered. "I just... I'm going to burn for this. I don't care. It's what you want, isn't it? Can't be too bad if you want it..."

Then he kissed her so hungrily that she forgot all the new questions she now had, before he trailed his lips and tongue down over her neck, her slowly bared breasts, her stomach... She grabbed onto him and pulled his head back up for another kiss and he obliged, before trying to kiss his way down again. She froze and dug her fingers into his arms, stopping him.

Finally catching on, he stared down at her with a frown. "Still?" he quietly said.

She didn't understand what he meant by that so her only response was a blank look.

He grimaced and then nuzzled her neck. "Let me taste you..."

A mix of excitement and dread was roiling around in her stomach. "No..."

He leaned back to pin her with a gaze that saw too much. "Nobody ever bothered?"

"That's none of your business!" she indignantly replied. She drew up one of her legs, caressing his calf with her foot as she did so. "There are other things I want more..." She knew her eyes told him exactly how much she wanted it, how much she _needed_ it.

He didn't need her to tell him twice. Abandoning his first plan, he instead slid one of his hands down inside her knickers whilst caressing her breasts, particularly her nipples, with his lips and tongue and breath.

It was maddening. She twisted and squirmed under him either to get away from him to ease the intensity or get closer to magnify it--she wasn't honestly certain which option she wanted more--as the feeling grew to impossible proportions. Yet this wasn't what she'd asked for, so she bucked up against him and grabbed onto the buttons at the front of his trousers, eager to remove them. He neither helped nor hindered her but simply continued with his own agenda to melt her brains. With shaking hands it took a little bit longer than it otherwise would, but she finally managed to open his trousers and shove them and his underwear off. He hardly even seemed to make a note of it. Yet when she grabbed hold of the erection that sprang free, he tensed and a pained sound escaped his lips. Delighted at his response, she began caressing him with a firm hold, up and down, stroking, squeezing...

Abruptly her hand was removed, but before she could complain he'd entwined their fingers and brought her hands above her head whilst silencing her rather effectively with a kiss that made the whole room spin. Once he seemed satisfied that she was compliant, he let go of one of her hands to tuck at her knickers. She eagerly helped him, lifting her bum and feeling rather gratified at his moan as their hips connected for a moment. Then he tore her knickers the rest of the way off and suddenly, they were both completely naked. Her eyes widened and her breath caught as she felt the warm, smooth skin of his erection against her naked flesh.

She'd half-expected him to immediately drive into her, but he didn't. At first she thought he was merely prolonging the pleasure, but then she realised--he was hesitating. Lust and guilt were warring on his face and the guilt seemed to be winning, even making room for regret.

_Oh, no, you don't!_

She was tired of him treating her like someone who was untouchable. She had absolutely no idea where he'd picked up the notion that she wouldn't be able to handle having sex with him, but she'd had it with that. She'd had a rough time lately and all she wanted was to get laid! Was that really too much to ask?

Before he could completely change his mind, she freed her one hand and reached down to grab him again, in a firm hold, caressing the indent right under the head with her thumb. It was enough to make him shiver, but when he didn't immediately resume his earlier activities, she resumed hers with long, firm caresses, making sure that he felt all of her nakedness pressed against him. And she lifted her head to kiss him, deeply. Because she wanted to.

It didn't take long before he tried to still her hand and pull away from the kiss, but she wouldn't have it. She didn't care if this was all she was allowed, she would have _something_ , damn it. She needed it. Needed to feel passion, to feel desired, to lose all control and make someone lose theirs. She needed to feel like she was still alive.

Gasping, he stopped her more forcefully, grabbing her hand hard and pulling it away. "You have to stop," he whispered.

It was almost too much to bear. "Why?" she replied. "Don't you want me at all?"

He swallowed and closed his eyes in a pained expression. "I do," he then said. "I-I can't stop this... I need to be inside you just one last time. So badly. Just once. I know I shouldn't allow it, but..."

"You should."

He shook his head. "You couldn't possibly understand." Then he kissed her again, and finally, _finally_ he was entering her. 

Her arms instinctively went around him and to clutch at his back. It had been a while and it hurt a little, but she merely bit her lip to keep from crying out and waited for the discomfort to pass, unwilling to say or do anything that might make him reconsider this.

"Amazing," he choked. "Of course..."

Immensely relieved and gratified that he wasn't mocking her _during_ sex, she wrapped her legs more firmly around him and began moving experimentally under him, getting used to the feeling and wanting more.

He groaned deeply. "No, Hermione, can't you just be passive for once?" She couldn't help but laugh at that, so he shot her a dark look and muttered, "Suppose not!" 

Then he began moving rather forcefully above her, completely obliterating anything that could've passed for a coherent thought as her mind couldn't contain anything but the pure bliss of the friction and the way he touched her, the way his lips kept returning to that one spot at the base of her neck with what was first light nibbling, but as her passions rose and his movements became faster, he sucked that spot at the base of her neck harder and harder until she was helpless to do anything but come, loudly, shouting out her pleasure.

"Hurt me," he grunted in her ear. "Scratch, bite... something."

She experimentally dug her fingers into his back, but her nails were short, so it didn't have much of an impact. Instead she tried nibbling his ear, but she couldn't bring herself to bite hard.

He snorted a breathless little laugh. "Cute. Never mind, then..."

That annoyed her, and she pulled down his head to kiss him, but when she had him distracted she bit down on his lower lip so hard she could taste blood. She immediately let go, shocked at what she'd done. He cried out and she thought she'd crossed the line until she realised that he was moving faster and more erratically and he was asking for more, more, more, please... So she dug her fingers hard into his back and raked her teeth over his collarbone until she found a good spot and then she chomped down.

His eyes rolled back and he came, losing himself so completely that Hermione could feel nothing but pure gratification as she watched his bliss and felt him collapse on top of her.

At some point Hermione seemed to have completely forgotten exactly how good it felt to have a man on top of her. The weight, the scent, the feeling of him still inside her... Suddenly it hit her once more exactly how much she missed Ron, and she had to make an effort to keep her feelings under control so Malfoy wouldn't get the wrong idea and think she regretted it. It wouldn't do to make him think that he'd made the wrong decision in sleeping with her after she'd been so insistent. Any sudden melancholy aside, she'd truly needed this.

Malfoy didn't stay unmoving for long. As soon as he seemed to have his breathing back under control, he eased off her and put his underwear back on without even looking at her. She'd have felt more annoyed about being ignored if she hadn't seen how his movements were a bit unsteady and his face was drawn. For once he didn't appear to be mean to her simply because he could. He seemed genuinely upset about what had happened between them. She didn't understand. He hadn't seemed to find her that awful only moments before if his begging had been any indication.

"Put on your clothes and leave," he hoarsely said, still without looking at her. "You got what you wanted. Now please pretend this never happened."

It wasn't the time to argue, she was far too naked for that, so she slid off the desk to her feet and bent to get her own underwear only to flinch when her abdomen objected to the movement. She was so sore inside out. It had been far too long since last time and he hadn't exactly been gentle with her. The movement drew Malfoy's attention and his gaze landed on her thighs before his face turned ashen and he actually swayed a little before grabbing onto the edge of the desk to hold himself up.

She looked down, puzzled about his reaction, and spotted blood on her thigh. Ah. He certainly was squeamish about certain things, wasn't he? "Relax," she said, her voice much calmer than she would have thought possible. "It's not that time of the month if that's what's making you feel sick. I suppose you gave me a little scratch or something. You were rather rough, you know." Then she too began putting on clothes.

He didn't respond, didn't give any indication he'd heard her at all, only stood there for a while and then, rather suddenly, pushed away from the desk and went to the door to his private rooms without looking at her again or collecting the rest of his clothes. There he hesitated. "Your neck..." he finally said. "You need to heal it. Or cover it up. It will bruise and attract attention. We could both get sacked if found out." Without another word, he entered his rooms and quietly closed the door behind himself.

She refused to be hurt. She refused. But whether he wanted to repeat this or not in the future, she would damn well make him face and resolve whatever issues he had with her because this was intolerable.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter contains mentions of self-harm. I tried to not wax poetic about it and use unnecessary detail, but tread carefully.

Draco was lying flat on his back on the top of his covers, his one arm covering his eyes, trying to keep his mind a blank. Granger had left his office hours ago. He'd lain like this, listening to the soft sounds of her getting dressed and then opening and closing the door as she'd left. He couldn't believe what had just happened, what he'd allowed to happen. What she had _wanted_ to happen. He'd never even been kind to her, so why hadn't she run away at the first chance? Why had she allowed him to put his hands on her? Didn't she realise who he was? _What_ he was? Didn't she realise... He shivered as a chill went through him and settled in his chest. No, she didn't realise, did she? And now it was all on him. He was the one that should have known better. He was the one that should have said no and locked the door.

He'd had one rule and one rule only: do not touch Granger. Sleeping with Granger was the best way to destroy himself, so of course in the end she'd been all but irresistible. Flirting with disaster was what he did best. But with Granger... it could not only destroy him but her too. It had been a testament to his all-consuming weakness for sex that he'd been unable to stop, unable to push her away, unable to deliver the harsh blow that would make sure she'd turn away from him. And now he was flooded by the guilt and shame that had lingered at the edge of his consciousness ever since she'd come to work here.

Guilt and shame. Not hatred. He'd really wanted to simply hate her instead, but trying so hard was exhausting. He'd honestly given up on hate years ago--he didn't have the energy for it--so it had been silly of him to think he could do it now. Hate was pointless. It drained you of everything you had and left you with nothing to show for it. Usually the object of your hate didn't even know or care much, so it was just wasteful. He did resent many things about being around her, though. He resented how she wouldn't leave him alone. He resented how sexually frustrated he became around her because, damn it, those lips were made for sin. He resented that she'd destroyed his life and maybe he'd been part in destroying hers too and there was nothing he could do to fix it. Nothing at all. He was doomed and she was damaged, and there was no way to undo it.

But most of all, he resented the monster he inevitably became around her. What kind of man took advantage of the attraction of a woman whose memory he'd wiped?

Clearly, a man like him.

And karma had got back at him for sleeping with Granger, by afterwards having her stand before him as a grown-up copy of the teenage Hermione he'd kept so carefully alive in that locked cabinet of his. Blood and everything. Oh, Merlin, the blood. He'd been all but paralysed with the realisation that they'd had their first time on a desk-- _again_ \--and she was bleeding-- _again_ \--and there was no way they could continue to do this or truly horrible things would happen-- _again_.

Last night he'd only wanted to scare her off with that first kiss, really. He was almost certain of that. It had simply been too difficult to be violent towards her when she'd been so damn vulnerable, bravely offering up those delectable lips. He'd seen himself and his past mistakes in her and he'd wanted to soothe her, to tell her that it wasn't really her fault... And then he'd lost himself and barely managed to stop before he'd defiled her amongst every conceivable kind of human filth. At that point, he should have cut her loose and found some other distraction. Another woman, maybe. Granger would even have expected that of him. Or maybe he should've gone back to the Hog's Head for some of the more shady dealings he'd been there for. Merlin knew his arm wouldn't stop bothering him without help these days.

He should have done so many things differently. Instead he'd found himself unbelievably hard for the _one_ witch he couldn't allow himself to have. When she'd come to his room, he'd greedily reached out and grabbed her, telling himself that he was doing her a favour, that she too needed this. It had been a very poor excuse indeed. Still now, the memory of the innocent way she'd bit him and then kissed it better had him hardening for her all over again in spite of himself. He'd shamelessly manipulated her desire to keep her from thinking, her moans and the tightness with which she surrounded him heightening his own pleasure to unbearable levels. He still couldn't quite bear it. He ached for more. He wanted to lose himself in her oblivious innocence over and over again, wanted to forget why he shouldn't. He wanted to erase their history with the present.

Obviously, he needed another way to take the edge off. And he already knew that attempting to do that with another witch would be pointless now that he'd tasted forbidden fruit. It would only frustrate him and make him weaker. He needed something more powerful. Something to numb him so he wouldn't make more mistakes.

* * *

Vera shot Draco a _look_ and then sighed. That wasn't really an uncommon occurrence. He made her sigh a lot, but never for any pleasurable reason. They were in one of the back rooms for privacy. Vera had set this one up to be a cozy little conversation room where students could come to talk about broken hearts and exam anxieties. It served Draco's darker topics just as well. And, apparently, today it suited his injuries.

"Aren't you going to do something about it?" Draco asked with a forced smirk. "Maybe kiss it away." He winked at her, fully knowing how much he annoyed her right now. It was his main reason to be here, after all. That and getting numbed. If he couldn't persuade her to numb him, he'd have to risk his neck by going to some very shady people that didn't like him very much and would like him even less after they heard about him snogging the pillar of society _Hermione Granger_ last night. Unfortunately, there was no doubt that they would hear about it. Too many witnesses had seen him follow her from the Hog's Head.

"We both know that you're very capable of healing a swollen lip without my help, so I'm assuming you want to rub your unhealthy coping mechanisms in my face as a way to bully me into letting you have more potions. You had sex, congratulations."

He'd never counted on it being easy, but Vera was cleverer than he'd given her credit for. He went for bold. "She even managed to shred my back, which was quite amazing considering that she didn't have much in the way of nails. Want to have a look at the glory?"

"No, thank you. But I'm intrigued. Short nails, you say. You tend to prefer clawed ones that make your back look like you've either been whipped or had a run-in with a crazed hippogriff. She doesn't sound like your usual type."

Draco's smirk faltered. "I suppose not."

"I want to hear more about that. What made you choose her?"

His mood was rapidly darkening. He did not want Vera to be this curious about Granger. Usually she simply changed the topic. "She was willing," was all he said.

Vera sighed again as it became apparent that he was in no mood to share any particulars about last night. "Why are you here, Draco?"

He pointed at his lip. "Still not healed." He puckered up.

"All right." She got to her feet. "Take off your shirt."

He instantly got wary. That wasn't part of the plan. He should have considered that when he'd mentioned his back, but he'd counted on her dismissing him as usual. "I don't think that's necessary."

"I might as well have a look at all of your scratches. Off with it."

"They're really not that bad... I was only joking, trying to get a rise."

"Now you're making me suspicious. What are you hiding? Off. With. It."

Sighing, he opened his shirt and bared his back and shoulders without completely removing it.

"All the way," she demanded.

When he didn't comply immediately, she took her wand and made his shirt disappear and reappear on a chair in the corner. He flinched and prepared for a lecture. He wasn't, however, prepared for the silence followed by a stinging slap. He stared at her, quite at a loss for words. Vera could be stern at times, but this was so unlike her that he wasn't sure who this woman before him was any more.

Vera was practically shaking with anger as she was unwrapping the soaked bandage around his marked arm. "You... would come here... with a bloody fat lip, but you'd hide _that_ from me?"

"It's nothing," he muttered, feeling more ashamed than he'd like to admit. There was a reason he hadn't wanted to tell her. He knew how it came across, but it was just one of those things... The sight of his own blood and the feel of the controlled burn sometimes calmed him when he was too far gone to be calmed any other way. "I'm not sure slaps are considered medically helpful." He rubbed his cheek.

"That is _not_ nothing! Since when do you cut yourself again?" Her anger was approaching the stage he hated and also would never have expected from her--the stage that involved tears. It worried him. She'd told him off a few times, but usually she was very understanding, and one time she'd hugged him, which had almost felt as uncomfortable as this.

He squirmed in his seat. "See, that's why I didn't tell you! You make it sound like I'm trying to off myself. I'm not. There's no need to be so upset. It's just... the Mark, it burns me. It kept me from sleeping and you wouldn't give me anything for it, so I was trying to remove the reminder and it got a little... much."

She mournfully shook her head. She was looking at least ten years older. "It's only a scar, Draco. It's dead. Stop trying to deface it all the time, you're only making it worse and risking infection."

"I know. I cleaned it."

"I thought all this stopped months ago. You haven't spoken of the Mark for so long, and now suddenly it starts to bother you again. I _told_ you that I'm not qualified to treat you, that you have to get outside help or I'll be forced to tell the Headmistress that you're a danger to yourself! You know what will happen then."

"I know." He didn't know what else to say. Of course he knew what would happen. They would ship him off to some protected facility... again. And this time, they might not let him back out. He wasn't considered a danger to anyone else--if he had been, he doubted they'd let him teach children--but apparently a man wasn't allowed to despise himself on his own terms either.

Vera sighed again. "I don't think you're a bad person, Draco. I didn't mean to... I'm sorry I hit you. I know it was unprofessional and wrong, but... I fear for you. I fear that one day I will miss something like this and then you will take it even further and it will be too late. If you refuse to see a specialist, then unload on me, or Carys, or that woman, or _anyone_. This can't go on and something has to be better than nothing." She'd cleaned and healed the wounds to a light pink and was now carefully re-bandaging his arm before she moved onto healing all those little delicious reminders from last night that he desperately needed to be rid of so he could pretend none of it had ever happened.

He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "You would have me unloading on a stranger?"

"At this point, I think unloading on your _cat_ might help. You have far too many things bottled up in there."

"I don't have a cat."

"Then get one!"

He shook his head, part of him a little amused that he should get a pet and use it for therapy. "All this work when most of it could be avoided if only you'd give me potions to help me cope and sleep..." There was still one potion she was willing to give him, though. One potion he was loath to ask for that would keep him out of Granger's knickers beautifully, seeing as he wouldn't be able to perform at all any longer. He'd pay any price to make certain last night wouldn't happen again, even that. He'd rather have the potions that would help the pain in his arm and make him care less, but at this point, anything would do.

Vera motioned for him to put his shirt back on. "Tell you what, Draco. I'm willing to offer you a deal. If you actually _talk_ to me at least once a week, I will let you have a few pain potions. Supervised and rationed."

Draco clenched his jaw. He wanted to decline so badly, but even the vague promise of actual pain potions he could get without getting stabbed in an alley was far too tempting at this point. Maybe he could appease Vera with _some_ of his demons. "What would this 'talking' entail?"

"Let's try it and we'll find out." She sat back down. "I will not tolerate any lies, mind you. If I find out you're lying to me, it will have nasty consequences. In return, I promise you that everything you tell me will be considered strictly confidential. So, your girl from last night. What made you deviate from your usual type?"

His jaw clenched even more, making it very difficult for him to speak. "That's what you want to talk about? Who I sleep with?"

"I'm not interested in all the things I already know. I'm interested in what I _don't_ know. And I don't know what's so special about the witch from last night that you felt the need to hurt yourself afterwards and get that constipated look on your face every time I bring her up."

"You make her more important than she is."

"All right." She motioned towards him with her hand. "Is there any particular reason why do you keep touching that necklace of yours whenever I try to broach your issues?"

"Ah." His hand dropped. He hadn't even been aware that he'd been doing it. "Nervous habit. I dislike nosy nurses poking around my personal life."

Vera sighed. "I know that this is uncomfortable for you, but you need to be more communicative."

She wanted communication? He could supply that. "Did you know that I once slept with a student?" Of course she already knew, but it seemed like she could use a reminder of who he truly was.

" _Former_ student," Vera said without as much as batting an eyelid.

"Barely. I don't think it had been a month since I'd last taught her class. I have to admit, the young ones really are more flexible..."

"It's interesting how you do this. It's almost like you enjoy testing people by constantly pointing out the worst things you've done, often going as far as to put yourself in a worse light than necessary, to see how far you can push your relationships with others before they break."

"Oh, sometimes I do worse than that. There was that one time I slept with my girlfriend at the time's sister. Well, I say one time when in reality we did it at least--"

"And why did you do that?"

Draco smiled. He knew he smiled rarely enough that it would unsettle Vera, but she didn't let it show. "She was a lot like you. My ex, I mean. Kept glossing over anything bad I said I'd done. So I needed to show her. And then when she saw it, of course she couldn't take it. They never can."

"And how are you going to show me?" Vera asked, now all calmness and poise.

He held up his injured arm. "Are you giving me a challenge?"

"Yes. I want you to tell me the worst things you've ever done. The absolutely worst thing. And then I want you to accept that it's not as bad as you think it is. _You_ aren't as bad as you think you are. You're only sabotaging yourself because you think you're bad. Because you think you can't be redeemed."

Draco snorted.

"I mean it," Vera said, all doe-eyed naïveté. It was really kind of irritating. "Because to be frank, I don't think you've done anything worth--"

"What makes the witch from last night so special?" he cut Vera off, reluctantly returning to the topic of Granger. "I'll tell you what makes her special. She... reminds me very strongly of someone whose mind I manipulated without her consent years ago. I took away her every memory of us, even though she begged me not to. To this day, she has no idea that she once loved me, that I was her first lover, and that she was willing to _die_ for me, had it come to that. And I did it all so I wouldn't have to look her in the eye when I betrayed her, everything she stood for, and everyone she cared about. I did it so I wouldn't see the heartbreak, so I wouldn't have to _feel_ it. She will never remember us. I wouldn't let her even if I could. Seeing... seeing that other witch... how could I possibly resist having her in my bed?"

Vera stared in stunned silence and Draco knew he'd won this round.

But winning had come at a very steep price indeed. Now he had to keep an eye on Vera for possible damage control. It was a pity. He liked Vera. But he'd risk her mind breaking in a heartbeat if it meant keeping his secret.

"So... any chance of some potions today?" he asked. His arm was throbbing worse than ever.

* * *

Deciding to grab the dragon by the tail--because getting in front of a dragon was _always_ a bad idea--Draco decided to seek out Granger to get a few things cleared up. To his great annoyance, he found her cosily gossiping with Dorky down in the staffroom, as if the idiot hadn't left her all by herself down in Hogsmeade the night before. It was more than he could stomach, so he simply snapped an order to follow at Granger and then turned on his heel, completely ignoring the other man.

He was very relieved that she did follow.

Eventually Draco entered a classroom that looked dusty enough to be relatively private, plus it had the added bonus of no paintings. "Sorry for interrupting your cosy time with Dorky," he said, going around a few tables to put distance between himself and Granger. 

She crossed her arms over her chest. "No, you're not. What's your game now, Malfoy? What do you want from me?"

Her guarded manner didn't at all surprise him. "I'm amazed you haven't hunted me down to 'talk' yet."

"Well, that would've been rather pointless, wouldn't it?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "Since when has that stopped you?"

Grangers lips pursed. "You actually _want_ to talk? You?" She seemed unduly amused at that.

"Not particularly. But we may need to."

"There's no need to talk about contraception." 

Her pursed lips had turned into a smile and it felt like she was laughing at him. He didn't like that. "What?"

"Contraception. It's taken care of. We may, however, have to discuss the possibility of you sexually transmitting a disease to me."

He gaped at her. "First off, I'd have thought you'd read _Trials and Tribulations at Hogwarts_..."

She frowned and her eyes became unfocused. "Doesn't sound familiar..."

He hurried on. "Second, a disease? Really? You think I run around giving witches diseases?"

"That's how those diseases work, actually. You have sex, you get infected. You have sex again, you infect someone else."

"I know how it works, thanks."

"If you're not going to be cooperative, then I'll have to assume the worst."

He gritted his teeth. "Carys is very careful and demands the same of her partners. So unless _you_ gave _me_ something, we should both be fine." Because he hadn't been careful with Granger, not at all. He hadn't had the mental capacity for it. If he'd had, he would've stopped altogether. At least he'd like to think that he would've, but there was no real way of measuring the extent of his weakness.

"Oh, that's a relief. You know, I very much like your girlfriend."

She _liked_ Carys? He was fairly certain there had to be some kind of rule against that. She was really pissing him off by now and he tried to tamp it down. "Could you shut up for a minute? I wanted to talk to you!"

She blinked at him. "I thought we were talking?"

"Not about this," he growled.

"Oh, all right then. Go ahead. Talk."

He took a very deep breath. Some things were better not asked in a sneer or a snarl or a growl. "When we... when we... yeah." He ran one of his hands through his hair. He couldn't even say it now. How stupid and immature was that? Merlin's beard, he was hardly sixteen any longer!

"When we had sex?" she helpfully suggested.

He winced. "Yes, thank you. Did I... hurt you?"

"Hurt me? Well, you weren't pleasant. But then, you rarely are, so..."

"No!" he bit out. "I meant physically. The blood."

Her face softened. "No. I wasn't hurt. It was just a scratch."

But there had been blood! Then a thought hit him, something so ludicrous and far-fetched that he hadn't even considered it before. Maybe... maybe she herself still thought...

"Were you a virgin?" he hoarsely asked.

He didn't know much about the finer specifics of the female body, but if it was somehow possible that he'd taken her virginity _again_ a decade later, there really was no way out of hell of for him.

Her eyes widened at the question. "I'm twenty-eight years old, Malfoy!"

"And you were together with that prude Weasley for how long? Plus you didn't answer my question."

"Believe me, he's not _that_ much of a prude, and neither am I!"

He snorted.

"I'm not a prude!" she repeated.

"Of course you aren't, Granger dear. That's why you were so eager to have me perform oral sex on you." Annoyance seemed to be the key to blunt speech for him today.

She blushed. "So there's one thing I'm not that comfortable with a virtual _stranger_ doing. That doesn't make me a prude."

He barely suppressed the urge to object to being called a stranger. "So... you've done it before? And I didn't hurt you? Merely somehow scratched you?"

"Yes. But thank you for caring."

"I don't."

"Oh, really." She was rolling her eyes at him. "Of course you don't, Malfoy dear. That's why you made a big deal out of asking."

"Believe it or not, but I don't make a habit of injuring women during sex and then going on my merry way."

"So you do care."

He bared his teeth. Merlin, she really was annoying. "There is something else."

"Then what is that?"

"It really shouldn't have happened."

"I'll hardly die from a scratch. Look, I don't even walk funny."

This whole thing was rapidly giving him a headache and he grimaced and rubbed his temple. "You're only pretending to be obtuse now, aren't you?"

Granger didn't look particularly contrite. She only shrugged. "I think of it more as giving you a way out before I get _really_ angry at where this is going."

"But I mean it. I lost my head and--"

"And I was the innocent maiden merely swept away by the raw sexuality of the big brutish... brute. Yes, I understood where you were heading before."

"It lacked a little something there at the end."

"I know. I'll work on it. Seemed a little harsh to call you an oaf, though. But then, you are a bit of an oaf, so..."

Draco couldn't help but sigh. "Granger..."

"I'm trying to tell you that I'm really not an innocent maiden, Malfoy. I can take care of myself. You can stop acting like I had no say in the matter, thank you. If you don't want it to happen again, that's fine, but you have to live with the fact that I didn't mind the first round at all."

He stared at her, then. Simply stared. "You really are different," he muttered. At some point in time she had grown up. For some reason, when this realisation should have calmed him, it made him anxious. If he didn't anticipate her moves, something disastrous could happen.

"Different from what?" Granger asked. "The witch you slept with last night? I have to tell you, I didn't change that much in a few hours."

He took a deep breath. He should treat her as a stranger. He should be detached and from now on try to see the woman in front of him, not the girl he used to know. It was the only way he stood a chance against her. "From the witch I thought I slept with," he sneered. "I have you worked out now. You really aren't a naïve little thing looking for a rebound shag."

She tilted her head at him. "Then what am I?"

"A messed up excuse for a witch looking for a way to justify her self-loathing."

Granger's jaw dropped.

"You know, it seemed odd to me," Draco continued, "how persistent you were, no matter how nasty I was towards you. But I thought that maybe you were simply too thick-headed and used to getting your way to take a hint. If I'd known what was really going on, I'd never have touched you. You feed off the nastiness, don't you? You enjoy being made to feel miserable."

"It would seem so," she softly agreed.

"You'll have to find someone else to help you with that from now on. It's not my game." He began moving towards the door, still keeping a couple of desks between them for good measure.

"Does that mean you'll stop being nasty to me, then?" she blithely asked.

He stopped in his tracks. She wasn't doing this on purpose. She could not possibly comprehend what she was doing, and rationally he knew he should let it go. Unfortunately he wasn't a very rational human being. He began slowly walking towards her, distance be damned. "No," he bit out. "Because it wouldn't change a thing. You hate my name, my face, the boy I was, and the man I am now. I'll bet you anything that my very presence makes your skin crawl. It's only a testament to how much you for some reason hate yourself that you even let me touch you last night." He stopped right in front of her. "I'd never have encouraged it, had I known. Sex is one of the few things I do right. I've even been known to sleep with some women I wasn't particularly attracted to, in order to make their day." The last sentence was delivered with a small smirk and a rather telling perusal of her body. It was low, but then... if they were strangers, she should be able to take it.

"Hmm." She looked pensive. "Say that is true..." she then began and then caught him completely off-guard as she stood on the tip of her toes and grabbed his neck to kiss him.

With no warning, searing lust shot through him, and he instantly felt himself grow hard. Her lips were so soft and warm, and he recalled everywhere they'd been, everywhere he'd wanted them to be...

She drew back, wearing a smirk of her own and he realised he'd pulled her closer. Fuck. He immediately let go. So maybe his body hadn't yet quite got the memo that she was simply some stranger to be mocked, derided and discarded. It would happen eventually.

"Don't ever try to play the 'I didn't actually want you' card again, Malfoy," she coolly said. "I'm not that stupid. Any objections you had last night were not from a lack of enthusiasm."

"You have it all worked out, don't you?" Draco asked, not even bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice.

"Yep," Granger cheerily agreed. "I don't hate myself, Malfoy. At least not that much. And I don't hate you either. I know you worry about how I will handle this, but there is no need for that. For years I've been put on this 'sweet, virginal, pure-hearted' pedestal by every public voice ranging from Witch Weekly to Harry's autobiographer, and the whole wizarding world has bought it. It's all a lie, Malfoy. You aren't tainting or corrupting anyone. I'm already there. I'm just better at hiding it than you are."

Then she flounced off, leaving Draco to consider whether Granger's taint was truly hidden or merely forgotten.

* * *

Granger had got the better of him and the woman knew it. It didn't take long for Draco to get tired of her smug little smiles whenever she saw him, but what was a man to do? He certainly wasn't going to talk to her again. Disastrous things happened whenever they communicated. So instead he ignored her. He knew that would bother her, even if she wouldn't show it. He also knew that flirting a bit with Variel would annoy her, but he kept that to a minimum so Variel wouldn't get any ideas. Unfortunately, he still had to at least appear sociable inside the castle, so not only did he have to endure Granger and Dorky's yammering at every meal, but he had to occasionally endure it in the staffroom as well.

Today, to top off Draco's increasingly bad mood, Granger and Dorky were now enthusiastically covering the trite topic of _love_. It was disgusting how transparent Dorky was in his interest, really, and Draco knew he was wearing a facial expression that perfectly conveyed how he felt.

Of course, as soon as Dorky noticed, he was unable to ignore it. "Look at Malfoy pulling faces. I'll bet you anything he's never been in love."

"Oh, leave him alone," Granger replied, not even looking up from the essay she was marking. "He's been engaged once."

"What's marriage got to do with love?" Dorky asked. For once Draco was inclined to agree with him.

Granger huffed out a breath. "Really, Darius. The man isn't a robot. He just likes to pretend he is." To her credit, she almost didn't smirk, but then, the insult would have worked better if Draco had actually been certain what a robot was.

"Why do you two always have to talk about me like I'm not here?" Draco pointedly asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Granger replied. "Maybe because you're always ignoring us?"

He glared at her. "Or trying to, at any rate. Yes, I loved my fiancée," he hissed. "Satisfied?"

Granger shrugged. "I already said you did. No surprises there."

"Maybe you can tell us how necessary you think love is?" Dorky pushed on with an insufferable smirk. "Hermione and I have yet to settle our differences." He flashed Granger a grin that may have passed as charming to some.

"Please!" Granger actually giggled back. _Giggled_. "I only said that romantic love is vastly overrated. I didn't say it wasn't nice or even necessary to some."

Draco frowned. "Necessary? Never thought of it in terms of necessity. It just is. Like breathing."

"So... it's as necessary as breathing?" Dorky asked. "Never thought you'd agree with _me_." And he didn't look too happy about it either. No, of course he'd have thought that Draco would scoff at the very existence of an emotion like love, wouldn't he?

Draco scowled. Even if he always enjoyed getting in the way of Dorky's agendas, he didn't like it that he'd come off as a sap. "I didn't say that. I meant it happens the same way as breathing. You don't really realise you're doing it, but you can't stop either. And you want to, because when you do realise what you're doing, it's usually because it's exhausting and painful and every gasp feels like it will kill you. You can try to hold your breath, but at some point you're forced to take another big gulp of air, and then you're back at square one."

Granger tilted her head. "Love as breathing. I like that."

Dorky glowered.

Granger's reaction somehow annoyed Draco even more. "Then you weren't listening. It isn't desirable. It doesn't even give you anything valuable, the way breathing does. It only sneaks up on you and then drains you of everything you have until you finally drop dead--at least emotionally--from the strain of it all."

"Sounds like you've had some healthy relationships, mate," Dorky said.

"At least I _have_ a girlfriend," Draco muttered, well and truly pissed off by now.

"I actually think Malfoy is right," Granger then surprised both of them by saying. "To some extent, of course. Love does bring something valuable with it, but it's largely involuntary and if not felt under the exact right circumstances it can be very painful, even crippling. And you can't simply will yourself to stop." She had to be talking about Weasley. Draco had to grit his teeth against the flash of a memory of Granger and Weasley embracing among the survivors in the Great Hall as he'd felt the last of his own doomed teenage hope for a brighter future shrivel up and die in his chest. She'd condemned him to a lifetime of keeping secrets that day, and he strongly resented the fact that she hadn't even managed to marry the git and have a bunch of ugly red-headed children.

"You two make love sound so wonderful," Dorky said.

"Well, it can be," Granger softly replied.

Draco snorted. "Not as I recall."

Granger shot him a withering look. "Malfoy, I know it's awfully hard to remember that not everyone is you, but people have different lives and experiences and some of them are actually positive. Really."

"That's possible, but I for one never want it to happen again. As you said, the concept really is overrated."

"Your fiancée must have hurt you very much." There was sympathy in Granger's eyes. He hated that more than anything. She knew nothing. Nothing! Who was she, of all people, to feel sympathy for him?

He forced his lips into a smile. "How could she have hurt me? She agreed to marry me because of what I could give her, not because of who I was. She never agreed to love me and I didn't truly expect her to. I only expected her to marry me, and she would have done that no matter her opinion of me. I only let her go because I looked at her and couldn't see either of us ever being happy together. If I'd at least seen my own happiness, I'd have made her stay to suffer through her own misery. Such is the nature of my blessed love."

Feeling that this was a good time to make his exit and go and lie down, Draco left the room. The cuts on his scar were driving him mad with their itching and burning.

* * *

It was a lost cause. The more Draco's mind became crowded with thoughts of how to deal with Granger, the more his arm stung and demanded his attention. He tried drinking and breathing and meditating it away, but nothing helped. He was going insane, and the thought of what exactly might happen when he snapped scared him. Even though they said he wasn't a danger to others, he knew he was capable of doing ugly things when he lost control. He had once spent six months in a protected facility because he'd been pushed too far, had blacked out, and had nearly beat a man to death without realising it. At least they said he had done that. He didn't really remember the incident. All he remembered was talking to a pretty girl while in a very bad state of mind, and then there was a gap before he vaguely remembered being restrained before a crumpled figure on the ground. He remembered seeing the girl standing there, crying, with a black eye. Everyone had assured him that he hadn't been the one to hit her. They said the other man had hit her before Draco had lost it. He couldn't remember, and for all he knew, his parents had paid everyone to put a nicer spin on things.

He knew he had a lot of unresolved anger when it came to Granger, and he was terrified of blacking out and waking up standing over her crumpled body...

Instead he decided to go down to The Three Broomsticks. Carys knew the risk he posed. She could handle it. She would put him to sleep with one simple spell if he as much as glanced at her or another patron the wrong way. And... well, it was high time he visited with his girlfriend, wasn't it? He would sleep with her and it would be the end of this minor physical obsession he'd had with Granger. If there was anything he'd learned in this past decade, it was that no woman's body was irreplaceable. There was always another one that served just as well... even if you sometimes had to search for it for a while. Carys's body was, he knew, delectable. Not only that, but she knew exactly how to please a man. He could easily seek oblivion in her. And if it didn't work the first time, she would let him try again and again until he was satisfied.

As he arrived at the pub, it even seemed like his plan might work. Carys was happy to see him. She'd been worried. But no sooner had he leaned in to kiss her, before he felt an uneasy prickling at the back of his neck. He finished the kiss and looked up to see Granger, standing in the door, staring. She looked away and without further acknowledgement disappeared back out.

"Wasn't that the new teacher?" Carys asked, following his gaze.

Draco saw no use in lying. "Yeah."

"I suppose she got over that dislike of you." Carys's voice was dry and clipped. He supposed that was only natural when he'd ignored her for so long and there were indications that he might have been involved with someone else. He was supposed to put Carys first, after all.

"Not really." Draco looked down at his girlfriend and sighed. Yet again Granger had managed to have a wilting effect on him simply by existing. Perfect. "I have to go."

"What, now?" Carys looked alarmed. "You only just got here. I thought you were staying the night."

"I'm... tired. Just thought I'd say hello." Even he knew how false this rang. He never simply came around for a greeting. "I'll try to make it back again soon."

Before Carys could make any further objections, he gave her a quick peck on the mouth and disappeared.

* * *

Granger must have run most of the way, because Draco's brisk walk didn't catch up with her until they were almost back at the castle. Even when she heard him nearing, she didn't acknowledge him but only sped up her pace. Draco let her get away with it until they were inside and she'd _almost_ made it to her own door, and only then did he make his move. He caught her against the wall, hoping it would scare her enough to _stop doing this._ He couldn't deal with her interest, he simply couldn't. She squeaked and cringed away from him, but didn't even look him in the eye.

"Let me go." The request was made quietly, but without fear. He both admired and resented her for that. She shouldn't be cowering at anything, but it would be nice if she'd be wary of _him_ , damn it.

"No."

"I mean it, Malfoy."

He looked at her, but she refused to raise her eyes to his. "What did you expect I would do?" he forced out. He didn't like to be this blunt and would prefer to ignore everything until it went away, but the problem with Granger was that she'd never go away on her own. He had to force her or she'd be forever haunting him.

"What you did, I suppose." He appreciated that she didn't try to pretend she didn't know what he was talking about.

"Obviously not or you wouldn't have run off like that."

She flinched. "It's just a lot sooner than I expected, ok?" She finally looked at him, but then looked away again before saying, "I had no idea how forgettable I'd feel. How... insignificant. It took me by surprise, made me think."

"That's how it _works_. You wanted a one-off and that's what you got! Was I supposed to stay celibate until you finished teaching?"

"No need to lecture me, Malfoy. I know I was being absurd and I'll get over it. I simply don't like it when it's thrown in my face exactly how easily discarded I am."

Easily discarded? Now there was a laugh. He still remembered every excruciating detail from ten years ago. If she'd known that, she'd never have thought of herself as 'easily discarded'. "Nobody threw anything in your face," he said. "You went to _her_ pub. Again, what did you expect?"

"But you're hardly ever there! Look, this is pointless. Go back, and I promise to stay in my rooms like a good little girl." Granger attempted to dismiss him and leave, but he used his body to block her. He told himself it was an attempt to intimidate her and not at all because he liked feeling her body pressed against his.

"How am I supposed to go back when I pissed her off by following you out?" he growled. "You completely ruined all my plans for the whole weekend!"

"I didn't even say anything!"

"You didn't have to. You were bloody obvious. Carys easily worked it all out from a single look."

She finally looked him full in the eye, her chin raised in what had to be the most sexy defiance he'd seen in a long time. He really had to watch his reactions to her. "I thought you had that kind of relationship, or was that not true?" she demanded.

"Watch it," he growled. "It's an open relationship, but not that open. She doesn't like other women acting jealous. She's the only one with that right." Actually he'd told Carys early on that he wouldn't stand for jealous displays, but Granger didn't need to know that.

She snorted. "I have issues with men wanting me one second and turning around to someone else the next. I freely admit that, and I wouldn't call it jealousy. What's _your_ problem that made you follow me all the way home and then physically restrain me to tell me off for _looking_ at you?"

"My problem is with soft little brunettes tempting and teasing me everywhere I go and then acting like I made them a promise. I did _no_ such thing!"

"I know you didn't, Malfoy." Granger reached up to touch his cheek and the simple gesture scorched him. He wanted to pull away but endured it. He deserved the discomfort for even for a second thinking that being near her would be without repercussions. She continued, "I don't even _want_ any promises. I can't explain it. It's not about wanting a boyfriend; I'm not at all interested in something permanent. I just wanted to feel wanted. But it didn't work out the way I thought it would. Suddenly, I went from feeling exciting and desirable to feeling... invisible and forgotten. I suppose I need to have a think about what it is I need and how to get it, because frankly, I don't really know myself."

Draco was afraid that he knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted the feeling of the kind of soul-consuming entanglement she didn't remember they'd already had years ago. The kind of affair that in his experience never ended peacefully. The kind of passion that always seemed to find a way to turn itself into pain, bitterness and even hatred. 

She wanted something that never ever ended well and more often than not left you scarred for life.

"Trust me, you don't want what you think you want," he said. Understatement.

"Don't tell me what I want."

"Instead, why don't you go out and find yourself a nice man--"

"Ugh!" She shoved at him so forcefully he took a surprised step back. "Who are _you_ to tell me that?"

"Someone who's tried every kind of dysfunctional relationship out there!"

"And yet you don't seem to know how to get a healthy one."

He couldn't keep himself from sneering. He'd forgotten what a vicious little bitch she could be sometimes, going straight for the jugular. He shouldn't have. That was part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. "But I'm sure you do. So why don't you put that knowledge to good use and stay out of trouble for once, yeah?"

"I already said I don't want a boyfriend. I certainly don't want a husband. I have the rest of my life to be bored to death in domestic bliss with an oh-so-good man that all the world approves of."

"Who said it has to be like that?"

Granger smiled at that, but the smile never reached her eyes. It made her look jaded. "I know it does. Every single man that wants to go out with me is projecting that future so clearly that I'm practically blinded. In the end it will be inevitable, since I really don't want to spend the rest of my life alone. I just... the other day I discovered that before I get back on the path everyone expects me to take, I'd like to feel alive for a little while."

Draco gritted his teeth. How could a woman so supposedly clever be so monumentally stupid? "You do realise that the things that make people feel the most alive are usually the ones that could kill them?"

She nodded. "Then so be it." Then she tilted her head slightly as if a thought occurred to her. "If you're determined that you won't kill me, do you perhaps have any handsome friends that would?"

Draco had no confidence that Granger would be the only one to die from it if he succumbed to temptation, but perhaps that was just as well. He'd felt like his time was running out for a while now already. Why not make a spectacle of it?

* * *

The glass was empty. Again. Draco still didn't like drinking, but he really was at a loss to how else he was supposed to cope with what was happening and his own reaction to it, which was disturbingly enough changing from shame, fear and guilt to excitement. Granger was standing in the middle of his office, perusing her surroundings like she'd never been there before.

"What would it take to cure you of your silly notions?" he then asked.

"Hm?" Granger looked up.

He tried for a smile but ended up with something like a sneer. "Who better to be driven mad by you than a proven madman? That's probably what you thought from the beginning when you set your eyes on me, wasn't it?"

Her eyes widened. "I don't think you're a madman..."

"Then you're wrong! I am a madman. I have no idea why you'd even want to sleep with me. Believe me, you could do better."

She shrugged and hugged herself. "I think you're... sexy, I suppose."

He shook his head. "No. You think my problems can be fixed by the right woman. You think I need a mother figure to nurture me and take care of me. And very probably, you like the idea that other women want me. It really hasn't a lot to do with me." 

And yet he found he _wanted_ her to find him sexy. He wanted her to fixate on little things and have her mouth go dry and her imagination go into overdrive, the way his mouth parched and his imagination worked right now as she nibbled on her own lower lip and absently smoothed a lock of unruly hair behind her ear.

It was maddening and a very good reason why he should avoid her and drink more.

She took a deep breath. "Let's get a few things straight. I hate it that you have other women at your beck and call, because too many of them are much prettier than I am and we both know it. I'm not at all interested in being your or anyone else's mother, but I do think some of your problems could be helped if only you wanted them to be. And I really, really mean it when I say I don't want to try to make a boyfriend out of you. Even if I were in the market, I don't think I could _ever_ be in a relationship with someone like you. You're spiteful and mean-spirited and like to hurt people, which are all traits I can't tolerate in a partner. No, what I do like is your physique. And I like the way you sometimes look at me, even when your mouth is saying hateful things. I also enjoyed the way you touched me more than anything I've experienced in years, which is probably quite sad, considering how you treated me afterwards."

He fought down a flinch at the strong dose of honesty. He'd worked hard to give her a poor impression of him, but he didn't particularly like that it had worked. At least she did appear to be physically attracted to him. "I suppose that's a good starting point," he muttered, less happy than he would have been if she'd left out all the negative points.

"I _would_ like you to treat me better, by the way. I can't tell if you hauled me in here because you mean to sleep with me again, but if you do, at least pretend to respect me."

He hesitated and stared into his glass for a moment before he said, "All right." With those words, he knew he'd succumbed. He would take her to bed again. Tonight. He'd been foolish to think he could turn her away. He wanted her, wanted his own destruction, too much. "Just remember that any entanglement with me _will_ be going nowhere."

She smiled sardonically. "How could I forget?"

"Easily. You don't know how to have sex without a relationship so you'll probably begin to fall for me. Nip it in the bud. We don't want things to get messy."

"Not that you think highly of yourself or anything."

He snorted and refilled his glass. If he'd thought highly of himself, he wouldn't have warned her.

"I'm not as inexperienced as you think."

"You've had one other partner, that doesn't count as vast experience."

"Wrong."

That surprised him as he'd never even once imagined that she might've been with anyone but Weasley. The very idea seemed impossible, not to mention unpalatable. "Oh?"

She sniffed and began fondling some of his textbooks that were lucky enough to be positioned on a shelf near her. "Not that it's any of your business, but I _have_ put myself out there after Ron and I broke up."

"So, two?"

"It's _really_ none of your business, but... three." She blushed and ducked her head at the admission. She was indeed the worldliest woman he'd ever met.

"And that's not enough for you to feel alive and desirable and whatnot?"

She shrugged. "The first one after Ron was my attempt to physically get over Ron with a one-night-stand. It wasn't what I expected at all. I didn't feel like he wanted me. I felt like he... he _used_ me, if that makes any sense in this context. It was like he didn't even see me, I was merely a vessel for him to rub off in. It was very disappointing. The second one was me thinking that maybe I wanted more of an emotional connection. So I went out a few times with a nice man who'd shown some interest in me, and then eventually ended up in the bedroom with him. He seemed to really like me, but... while I liked him too, I felt like we were completely disconnected in bed. It was just as well, since he got very nasty when I ended it."

"And then I fucked you on a table so hard you bled and _that_ is what you want?"

"You make it sound so romantic." She fluttered her eyelashes.

His answering grin couldn't be helped. "Yeah... romance is not part of this deal."

"Good," she said, looking for all the world like she meant it. "But are we going to have sex tonight?"

The candid question nearly made Draco choke on his drink and he had to finish a round of very unsexy coughing before he could finally croak, "You can't simply ask a question like that!"

"I thought that was what we were discussing? Besides, I only wanted to know if you meant to do anything about it tonight, because then I'd suggest you stop drinking while you were still _able_."

That was enough of a provocation to make Draco drain his glass before he pronounced, "I am _always_ able!"

A man did have his pride, even if it wasn't necessarily backed by the truth.

* * *

Before long, Draco decided that Granger was far too confident, entering a madman's private rooms. How could she be so... casual about all this? She shouldn't know how to be so at ease with opening the door to his bedroom and going in uninvited. She shouldn't even _be_ there. Stupid woman. Stupid, fearless, _sexy_ woman.

"I read _Trials and Tribulations at Hogwarts_ ," Granger said out of the blue. "Thank you for the recommendation. I found it very enlightening."

Draco stiffened. There was no reason why she'd forget that book. Either she'd simply read too many books to remember them all, or it must have been tied to her memories in some way, in which case he didn't want to dwell on it. "I don't remember recommending it."

"You assumed I'd read it. That was enough."

"For the record, I assume you've read just about every book in the universe. But I'm not really here to talk about books..." He gave her a thorough once-over, trying to gather all his scattered thoughts and feelings and focus them into one single purpose: _Want._ It wasn't actually that difficult. His mind was very willing to give up images of her naked, writhing, gasping, moaning...

Her eyes widened and she began nervously fiddling with her hair. Good. He slowly moved closer to her, his head filling with memories of her scent, her sounds, the feel of her beneath him, around him... She was so passionate and she could use that as a weapon, but it was perhaps better that she didn't realise that until he was out of her range. For now, he'd simply stoke the flames and enjoy the sting. He carefully cupped her cheek and brushed his lips over hers. It was clear from her hesitant reaction that she wasn't yet sure what she was expected to do. Oh, how tainted she must be.

"Where's your wand?" he whispered against her mouth.

She gave him a blank look and then blinked as if to clear her head. "In my, um, pocket?"

He dropped his hand and turned his back on her. "Always keep it within reach. Under the pillow, maybe."

"Why would I need to?"

"Because I could lose control and it's always dangerous when a madman loses control."

"How... comforting."

"You're free to back out any time." He didn't mean that, but that would be for her to discover if she tried. 

"So are you."

He couldn't help the sardonic smile. He'd never been free. "Then get on the bed."

She did as told, making a point out of placing her wand under his pillow. If she was obedient, then that was definitely new. Back when they'd been involved, she'd always been either skittish or teasing, but never obedient.

He sidled up next to her and bent over to press his lips against hers, very careful to only touch her with his lips and tongue for now. Of course she had different ideas, running her hands up his chest and around his neck, bringing him closer. No, she definitely wouldn't be obedient. She would take what she wanted, and she wouldn't know the consequences. But then, he knew the consequences and right now he simply didn't care as her heady kisses were deepening, robbing him of the last of his senses.

He somehow managed to draw back, and fluffed up a pillow and leant against it, semi-reclined. Granger didn't waste any time in sliding on top of him and then glide her hands down to his belt. The witch went straight for the gold. Damn her. There were few things he found more seductive than the simple act of a witch opening his belt, as that always held such promise. Plus, getting undressed by a desirable witch whilst she stared at his groin was definitely cause for excitement. Granger noticed his physical reaction and shot him a crooked smile before she began swiftly unbuttoning his trousers. Only when she was excruciatingly carefully moving her hand inside his fly, did he stop her.

"Patience," he said. "You need to do a better job of undressing us first."

She raised an eyebrow and then ran her hand down her own neck, down to caress her neckline that, unfortunately for his blood pressure, was showing a bit of cleavage today. "Us?" she then asked. "Aren't you going to do anything, then?"

He slowly shook his head, even as his eyes seemed glued to her chest. "You're so _experienced_ \--you show me how it's done."

She slid her hands down the front of her body to the hem of her blouse, but just as he thought she was going to pull it up and over her head, she seemed to change her mind and put her hands back on his chest instead. He hissed with frustration. He wanted her naked skin, damn it.

"Hey, if I decide what to take off first, it's going to be the bits that are fun for me," she said with a laugh.

"Then do it," he said, taking her wrists and moving her hands to the top button of his shirt. He noticed with some satisfaction that her pulse jumped, even if she didn't let on that she was affected.

She slowly, very slowly, obeyed. For each button she leant a little forward, and every time he could feel the slight shifting of her weight on his lap, the tightening of the muscles in her thighs, and the soft caress of her breast brushing his arm. It was all driving him insane. He wanted her to ride him. He wanted to be hot, sweaty and naked. He wanted to be embraced by oblivion and lose himself in her.

Finally he snapped and sat up straight, tilting her so she had to support herself on one hand behind herself. She looked so damn inviting like that, even wearing a slight pout, that he didn't dare look at her for too long lest he simply fall on her like last time. He seemed to have next to zero restraint when it came to her. Instead he grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head. There, now at least she couldn't torment him with that any longer.

"You know, Malfoy," she teased as he threw his shirt aside. "You're awfully impatient for someone so experienced."

He was, and there was no real excuse for it. "I simply bore easily," he said, leaning back, running his hands up her thighs. She was unfortunately wearing trousers, but that could easily be remedied.

"You don't seem bored," she said and casually cupped his groin.

He sucked in a breath. Maybe he'd given Granger too little credit. She certainly knew how to tease. "Take off your clothes."

She pursed her lips, mock-pondering as she merely stroked him through the fabric of his trousers.

"Now," he demanded in a hoarse voice. "Do it now, or I'll..."

"You'll what?"

He wasn't going to let her call his bluff. "Fuck you hard, just the way you like it, but deny you your orgasm for hours."

He saw her pupils dilate and felt her breath speed up a bit. She liked that thought, did she? "Hours? Now you're bragging."

"Try me. You think I'm wanted for my delightful personality?" He shot her a dark smile.

"I'm still not convinced it would be a punishment..."

"I'll make you beg for it. You will be so frustrated that you won't know what to do with yourself. I may even allow myself to come once or twice so you feel the full impact of it. I could make you weep with want." Weeping wasn't exactly what he had in mind for her, though, but she seemed to find the idea titillating.

"And what will I get if I do what you want me to?"

"All the orgasms you want."

She leant forwards until her lips were brushing the shell of his ear before she purred, "That's quite a promise."

He knew. Far too well. "Take off your clothes."

"Mmm, no." Her eyes were laughing at him again.

He did the only thing he could do under the circumstances--he toppled her and swiftly relieved her of most of her clothes before she could object. Experience did have its perks, although she had to help kick her trousers away.

She was still amused and in the mood to tease, so she snuck her hand inside his trousers and underwear and once again began on those maddening strokes that had driven him out of his mind last time. She pressed her lips to his ear again and whispered, "Want me to suck you?"

His whole body gave a jerk. He would _love_ to feel those soft lips wrapped around his cock, but unfortunately he had different plans. "No, not right now." He closed his eyes on a shiver. "But keep this up and you'll have come on your belly soon... Or maybe your breasts..." He had to swallow at that thought. He'd love to finish on her breasts. He'd caught himself imagining it more than once since last time.

"Maybe I want you to..." she muttered and nibbled on his neck.

It felt so good that he almost forgot himself, but then a more sentient part of him seemed to realise what was going on and he snapped out of it. He grabbed her wrist to still her hand. "I'm supposed to do the teasing for once, witch."

"I'm not teasing. I need you to lose control." She kissed him and caught his lower lip between her teeth for a light nibble before she let go. "Please..."

She had no idea how close she was to being granted her wish. Or maybe she did. He didn't like that thought. He needed the control more than she did.

"I'm not ready to do that," he lied, before pushing down his trousers and underwear and settling down on top of the still underwear-clad Granger. "Now stop talking," he muttered and kissed her, deeply, to shut her up and distract her. 

She complied and he reined back his own need so he could do what he did best--focus and pay attention to detail. Her lips had just the right amount of fullness. They were made to be kissed and, if he recalled correctly, were quite talented in other areas as well. As he moved his lips down her neck, he needlessly confirmed that it was the home of at least one very sensitive area that made her wild if he as much as breathed on it. There also appeared to be one lesser known spot behind the opposite ear that made her gasp. He skipped lightly past her collarbone and down past her still covered breasts. He knew that if he began exploring her breasts, he'd never move on. However, when he moved down her belly, she stiffened and grabbed his shoulders, and he felt compelled to return to her mouth to give her a reassuring kiss.

"Don't worry," he muttered. "I'm not doing anything you don't want me to. Just a bit of exploration, yeah?"

Her eyes were dubious, but she seemed to accept this--cautiously--and he returned to what he'd been doing. On the left side of her navel, there were three almost invisible vertical stripes. Without thinking, he placed a fingertip on each and followed them down. They weren't scratch marks, though. They were stretch marks. Slightly peculiar in her case, but not uncommon. He shot her a quick glance, but she didn't particularly appear to have noticed what he'd been doing. Good. Women didn't like it when these little things were noticed, least of all during sex. He continued down, soothing her by placing a hand on her pubic bone as if to shield her better than the damp cloth of her knickers could, as he continued down her thigh, pulling up her leg, so his tongue could dart behind her knee. Her gasp told him that not only was it unexpected for her, but it was also highly appreciated. He smirked and continued on.

By the time he was done exploring her legs and feet, he had found several sensitive spots that teenage him would never even have dreamed of looking for. He'd save the back of her for later, since he was already half-crazed from her scent and the way she squirmed and whimpered under him. He refused to become a mindless savage like last time and even managed to swiftly relieve them of their last scraps of clothing without tearing any of it.

She arched against him and whimpered, "Malfoy, please."

He knew she needed to come. He should let her. The problem was that he wasn't certain that he would be able to keep himself from joining her if he were to watch her orgasm right now. She needed more. _He_ needed more.

"No," he muttered against the base of her neck. "You've been a bad girl. Bad girls have to suffer with the bad boys."

"At least be inside me," she whispered in reply, turning her head so her breath caressed his face.

He tried in vain to swallow his groan. He was grappling hard with his control, unable to ignore the soft, moist warmth cradling his length, promising bliss. "Yes. God, yes."

Much like last time, she thrust her pelvis against him and for a moment his mind blanked. It was so bloody _good_. Before he could reveal himself to be the incompetent lover that he always felt like around her, he drew back just enough to angle his hips and slowly push into her. But of course, she wasn't having any of that, and before he knew it, she'd thrust against him again, and he was completely buried inside her.

"Easy," he groaned. "Need to... take it easy."

She moved against him and he had to focus everything he had to not blindly pound into her until he found release. The idea of this lasting hours really was laughable now. "Please come," she whispered and the jolt that went through him almost made him spill.

"Ladies first," he muttered, steadying her hip and forcing his own hips into a rhythm he found frustratingly slow at this point.

"No!" She squirmed against him and rocked her hips, very deliberately trying to make him lose control. It was working. His thoughts were becoming incoherent and filled with nothing but her and how much he wanted to come in her, on her, with her, for her...

With what was left of his willpower, he steadied her one last time and tried to summon some reason from what was left of his brains. "Usually I could go a few times, but I'm tired and more than a little bit drunk and I'd _really_ prefer it if you came first, just in case."

"You don't understand," she muttered, taking him by surprise and rolling them both over so she was on top. "That's not what I need. I need you to look into my eyes, tell me how amazing it feels, and come." Then she began moving.

His eyes rolled up in his head and he wasn't able to think any longer. He wasn't able to resist. "Unfair, Hermione. You know I need you. More than any... ah, Merlin. Please don't stop. Just... please don't. K-keep this rhythm, please. Yes. Oh, God, I'm... I'm... fuck!" He grabbed Hermione's hips and pushed her down as he thrust up into her, coming harder than he could remember even doing last time. He had to bite his own tongue till it bled to keep from saying things he would regret while riding high on this feeling of complete ecstasy. It wasn't a problem he usually had, but he reasoned that it must be her giving nature that made him want to validate her and tell her how he'd always wanted her. It would be a bad idea, though. A really bad idea.

When he'd finally got his breath and his brains back, he said, "I can't believe you made me do that."

She smirked down at him, still poised above him with him inside her. "Took you long enough, actually."

He shook his head at her. "Let me lick you."

"We just had sex!" She wrinkled her nose, back to being the prissy little thing.

He shrugged, not overly bothered by anything right now. "We can clean you up first."

She shook her head.

"I know you said you don't care if you come, but you're positively vibrating. I'd love to watch you orgasm." He squeezed her hips where he was still holding her.

She slowly grabbed one of his hands and slid it down between her legs where they were connected. "Then make me. With you still inside me."

He had no trouble at all finding her sensitive and swollen nub between her slick folds, and as soon as she felt the merest brush of his fingers, she whimpered and he felt her tightening around his sensitive cock. He groaned. She felt so delicious and he really needed to taste her one of these days, but since she didn't seem to want it to happen today... He began rubbing her in earnest and she squirmed on top of him, making him swallow a moan when he felt himself already hardening again. But it was a promise he wouldn't be able to follow through on for a while yet, so he merely hoped she enjoyed grinding against him and pulled her down for a kiss as his fingers danced over her clit again and again and again and...

He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that she was vibrating. And with every caress, she jerked and jumped and whimpered and drove him absolutely _mad_. Finally, her whimpers became deeper and more persistent, until she made a sound that sounded almost like a sob and he felt the ripple around his cock.

_Is it possible to go off again this soon?_

He wished it were. He'd love to come inside her as she looked and felt so completely lost to pleasure. Her grinding had stopped for the most part, although she still softly moved her hips, like she didn't even know what she was doing. It felt amazing. Unfortunately, now that she was spent, she looked exhausted, and he would probably need to keep her up for at least another hour if they were to have a thoroughly satisfying round two. So he did his best to squash his urges. For now.

He would have her again, and next time he wouldn't let her off this easily.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very profound thank you to my Britpick filigree1 and my beta LeanaM for making this happen. Also thank you for my pre-readers Ariel Riddle, DelicateScholar and MazVN for boosting my confidence. It was really needed, guys. And just an extra shoutout to DelicateScholar for all her support in these past months. It's been invaluable to me. Thank you so so much.
> 
> All right, enough fluff. You didn't come here for that. Well, maybe you did. Who knows? I don't even know WHY you're here. It's been 3½ years, OMG. But thank you for your continued support and faith in me. You have no idea how much that has meant to me, as I struggled to get to a place where I could post this.
> 
> And on top of everything else, Ariel Riddle also made me this beautiful aesthetic. So extra props for that. <3
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

The darkness and chill surrounded the two of them as they trodded along, weaving through the branches of the trees. Hermione took a deep breath, feeling invigorated by the clear night air, whilst her companion looked around nervously.

"Afraid of the dark?" she teased.

"No," he replied, his face hidden. "I'm afraid of what's _in_ the dark!"

Laughing, Hermione turned around only to feel the laughter die in her throat and her limbs freeze in place. In front of her was a five-legged, man-eating monster. She wanted to scream or run away, but she didn't have the wherewithal to do either.

 _I'm going to die,_ she thought as her companion yanked her out of harm's way and snarled at the beast while turning into something much bigger, much scarier...

"Hermione! Hermione, wake up!" 

The harsh voice and a sharp nudge brought Hermione back to reality.

_Just a dream._

She heaved a relieved sigh. Of all the irrational fears one could have, she for some reason feared the Quintaped, even though she'd never even been close to the Isle of Drear, the only place where they lived.

"Oy, are you ignoring me?" Draco persisted.

He really hadn't grown out of being an annoying git. Without deigning to answer, Hermione yawned and stretched, before she shot him a cross look. "What?"

"You really should be getting back to your rooms now."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I should. How could I not have jumped out of bed the second we were done? My mistake." She got up and began getting dressed.

"You snore," he said.

 _Don't let him bait you, don't let him bait you._ "Before you so rudely woke me, I had the most delightful dream of being a young girl with a boy willing to die to protect me."

"Must've had a few of those boys," he surprised her by saying. 

Was that a compliment? Or did she simply not understand the insult? She decided to play it by ear. "One or two. Maybe a dozen. Who's counting? Those were the days."

"If it's _boys_ you want, I don't think you need to be so wistful."

"What do you mean?"

He actually leaned back and laughed, looking far too sexy for words with the sheets around his waist and his hair a mess. And were those scratch marks? Now she wanted to lick each one of them better, and maybe trace around his pecs and dip into that sexy little hollow at the base of his throat for good measure. Damn him for attracting her physically like that. Maybe if he were less jumpable, she could pay more attention to his rotten personality. "Oh, you didn't notice?" he said, a teasing quality to his voice. "I can count at least three male students with a thing for teacher."

Hermione sniffed, turning away so she wouldn't salivate any more over his half-naked body. "You're making that up. Besides, anything like that would be inappropriate."

"So that's your main concern? That it would be _inappropriate_? Interesting."

"I'm not having this conversation with you since you only want to twist my words." She recognised the frustrated snarl in her own voice and made an effort to rein it back. It wasn't exactly his fault that she was ready to jump his bones again, even though it was becoming increasingly clear what a bad idea it was.

He shrugged. "As you wish. Be careful on your way out."

"You really think anyone will be around at this hour?"

"Yes. Paintings. Lots of them. Nobody gossips more than a painting."

"Oh!" Finally she realised what had been missing from Malfoy's office and quarters that made them look so bare--there wasn't a single painting there. "You had yours removed," she observed.

"Yes. Couldn't stand the buggers always tattling on me."

"I thought they couldn't be taken down."

"Oddly enough, once I threatened to paint over every single one of them and even brought up a few buckets of magical never-come-off tar and giant brushes, they came down with no fuss."

Hermione couldn't help but grin at that mental image. "McGonagall must've loved that."

"She told me that I shouldn't bully two-dimensional beings so much, especially not when they had access to her office and wouldn't stop complaining about it. But I fear that while I've secured my own rooms, I've made it worse outside them."

"And that's why you need me to leave..."

She really needed to sit down and give herself a good talking-to. The relief she felt at this vague and inadequate explanation made her feel disgusted with herself. Where had the last of her self-respect gone? If the paintings were the only reasons, he could still have woken her and sent her off far more gently.

"Well, that and I prefer to sleep alone. Did I mention that you snore?" His words curiously lacked any kind of sting, but combined with her self-loathing, it was still enough to push Hermione over the edge.

That was it. They were done. Forget about last night's agreements. In the harsh light of day, they suddenly seemed far less appealing. But she wouldn't make a big deal of it, since he'd probably just shrug and laugh it off anyway. So much for her grand affair. A few romps would have to do.

"Once or twice," she calmly replied. Using his mirror, Hermione fluffed up her hair and more or less looked like she had when entering his bedroom earlier that evening. "Well, thank you for once more giving me what I asked for."

"If you think you need to _thank_ me as you leave, then you definitely don't know how to do this."

"But I've been thinking--"

"When? When you were riding me, or afterwards when you passed out?"

"--And it simply doesn't seem right for me to keep doing this."

"I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what you're on about."

"You have a girlfriend, remember?" she pertly reminded him--and herself. She wasn't truly comfortable with this arrangement anyway. Maybe it really was for the better to stop it.

"And? You already made it very clear that you wouldn't want me for a boyfriend, so I see no conflict of interest."

"That much at least is true."

He mock-winced at her. "The lady has claws."

"And right now, the lady wonders how to best get past the paintings in her room without causing talk."

"I'd suggest sneaking. And you can always lie and say you fell asleep somewhere with a book."

"But won't they work out that lie?"

"No, of course not. Paintings are stupid. And they have a rather limited capacity for memory. The worst that can happen is that they give McGonagall enough clues to find us out, and even then, I'm the only one that will be punished."

"That hardly seems fair." She was done primping and had turned towards the door. The sooner she got back to her room, the better.

He shrugged. "If life were fair, I'd be much worse off, so I won't complain. And in this case you shouldn't either, Princess."

Princess? 

... _we got caught... Princess_ ...

Hermione blinked and frowned, feeling like she almost remembered something, like it was at the tip of her tongue. Who got caught doing what? Why was it important? She frowned harder, trying to recapture the elusive thought, but then it was gone, leaving only a throbbing pain in her temple. Confused, she stumbled to her room without hearing anything else Malfoy had to say.

***

"Aim it a little lower. A little lower. There! No, now it's too low. Hold it, hold it! And angle it. No, the other way. There, right there!" Darius looked almost triumphant and Hermione tried hard to stifle the giggle that would mean she lost this very particular position and angle.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Now you channel some magic." He grinned at her. He was sitting in his favourite chair with his electronics before him, and Hermione was bent over close to his arm, lending him a helping wand.

"What kind of magic?"

"The magical kind."

"That's not very helpful, you know." But she grinned back. As it turned out, helping Darius with his projects was actually a lot of fun.

"You're asking a Squib to define magic. I just need this thing to play music."

"All right," Hermione nodded determinedly, took a deep breath and tried to visualise. Then she let it flow.

A bright flash of light surprised her and made her jerk back and lose her balance so she ended up in Darius's lap. They took one long look at each other and then burst into laughter.

"Maybe a little less of that," he chuckled, lightly squeezing her waist before letting go.

Hermione was just about to get up, still laughing, when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Malfoy had entered the room. Her first impulse was to be embarrassed and explain, but then she thought better of it and simply smiled sweetly at him. She was no longer in any great hurry to get up.

Draco's eyes narrowed slightly and a muscle in his jaw seemed to clench as he took in the cosy little scene. Then he visibly relaxed his stance and, ignoring the two of them, went to his customary seat.

Right. She had forgotten. Being jealous was beneath him. But then, there were probably at least three other women waiting in the wings to take her place. Now it was Hermione's turn to gnash her teeth.

"Not that I mind terribly," Darius murmured near her ear. "But weren't you going to get up?"

Hermione blushed and nodded, getting to her feet. "Want to try again?" she asked in a clear and hopefully steady voice.

Darius grinned and shook his head. "Not right now. I need to fix this mess first. But, ah, any other time..." He winked at her. Hermione softened and smiled back at him again. At least she had someone to count on for kindness and easy conversation.

***

Maybe Malfoy was above jealousy, but he most certainly wasn't above giving her the cold shoulder for the rest of the day. And the next. And the one after that. Hermione didn't particularly feel like she'd done anything wrong, so she decided that he would either get over it or he wouldn't, and left him to his antics.

Meanwhile she spent more time with Darius and was legitimately excited when it seemed like they were actually making progress on his project.

Yet since Malfoy decided not to use the staffroom, some of the shine quickly wore off. Darius was great company, but she began to feel an itching of restlessness. Obviously she couldn't seek Malfoy out, so she did something she should've done a long time ago instead--she sought out Neville in his gardens.

It wasn't that she hadn't run into him before. He did occasionally come to the Great Hall for lunch and he'd been there at the feast but he had admitted to Hermione that he by far preferred his gardens to the castle, and that he always aimed to get home on time so he could help his wife with the pub in the evenings.

Hermione could only imagine how difficulty it could be for the two of them to get any time together, with Hannah working nights at the Leaky Cauldron and Neville working school hours. Still, they seemed content. No, more than content. Whenever she'd come by the Leaky Cauldron in the past, they'd always been smiling, laughing, positively radiating happiness.

She'd never quite understood how they did it. How did they so easily shake off everything they'd been through and live in the now? She really wished she knew their secret.

She found Neville kneeling in the mud, pulling weeds.

"Isn't there a spell for that?" she asked, trying to find a path that didn't muddy her hem too badly.

Neville snorted. "And risk harming these delicate shoots? Sometimes getting dirty is better." He looked up at her with a big grin. "Besides, it's more satisfying this way."

Malfoy must have had a poor influence on Hermione, because all she could think was, _Oh, yes._ But obviously her thoughts didn't include rolling around in the actual dirt, and for some reason being here, watching Neville dig, made her acutely uncomfortable. The scent of freshly overturned dirt had never failed to make her nauseous ever since _that_ one cold and lonely night so many years ago…

She immediately blocked off those memories. Some things were better left alone.

Looking back up at the castle, she was considering going back, when Neville looked up and asked, "Care for a cup of tea?"

Neville's office was little more than a glorified shed, but he seemed to be perfectly fine with it. In fact, it seemed downright homey. Hermione envied him his ability to find pleasure in all the little things. For years now, she had struggled to find any kind of happiness or fulfilment in anything she did, and here he was, beaming at her across a cluttered desk in a make-shift office that was cold now and must be freezing in winter.

For a little while they traded gossip and news about all of their shared acquaintances. Then their talk turned to the school and how she liked it there.

"And Draco Malfoy?" Neville asked. "I hear you've had some contact with him?"

For no discernible reason, Hermione started and nearly knocked over her cup, spilling some tea into her saucer. "Y-yes," she said, clearing her throat, as she tried to mop out the mess without giving her nervousness away. "As a matter of fact, we've worked on a unification project together. Difficult to get the children excited about it, though."

"Ah." Neville's lip quirked. "He must've loved that."

"It wasn't too bad," Hermione muttered and took another sip.

Neville didn't answer, but stared into his cup with a frown for a few minutes, as if trying to decide something. Finally he said, "You should be careful."

Hermione almost choked on her tea. "Why?" she croaked.

Neville hesitated, now looking out the window. "Malfoy... He's... It's just that I know you. I know you like to try and make the world a better place. You see a damaged person, and you want to draw out the good parts in them. But Malfoy, he's... best left alone."

"He's not as bad as all that."

"No, I know. He's no longer a schoolyard bully. Sometimes he's even downright decent. But... No, never mind."

"You can tell me."

Neville still looked uncomfortable. "I've worked here longer than he has. I've noticed things. I've... seen him with people. I mean... With women. How he treats them." He looked away, his face flushed. It had taken some effort for him to say this.

Hermione gaped. Was he talking about Malfoy's nasty temper, or was he actually accusing him of abusing women physically? "But surely you don't think--"

"No! No, of course not!" He held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender. "It's just that... almost every time it soon becomes obvious that they think they can change him, heal him. It just... never works." His face was rapidly going from a charming shade of tomato to a fetching shade of aubergine. "It usually just makes it worse as if he's determined to prove himself irredeemable and, well, I just... It feels right to let you know, so we can skip the bad stuff and all just get along."

"So what you're saying is, 'don't poke the sleeping bear'?" Hermione nodded. That was probably sound advice, anyway. People didn't change easily, and never without actually wanting to change. Malfoy, for all his misery, didn't seem to want to change a thing.

Neville smiled, obviously relieved to get this off his chest. "Or rather, don't tickle the sleeping dragon."

***

With her sex life currently on hold, Hermione found plenty of time to read. Not that she ever didn't have time to read--that would be like not having time to eat or breathe, a completely absurd notion--but she had _more_ time to read. And as with any good thing in life, the more she did it, the more she wanted to do it. So one day she was wandering the halls with her nose in a book, completely oblivious to where she was, where she had been, and where she was going and why, when she hit a man-shaped mass.

She knew it wouldn't be Malfoy before she even looked up. It didn't feel or smell like him. Odd how information like that had lodged itself in her brain without permission. She had far more important things to remember than how he was built or how he _smelled_.

Where she was going, for one thing.

Darius chuckled. "Easy, Hermione, or is mowing down people a new sport of yours?"

"Oh, yes," Hermione said, inserting a bookmark, also known as a _quitter's label_. "Bonus points if I knock you on your arse. Unfortunately the students in this place are far too sturdy, as are the teachers."

"I thought you were going to lend me your wand this afternoon."

"Of course!" Hermione slapped her palm against her forehead. " _That_ 's where I was going. Want to do it now?"

Now his chuckle turned into a laugh. "Waited for you an hour, Princess. Maybe tomorrow."

 _Princess._ She wasn't particularly fond of that nickname, but decided not to comment on it. Instead she chatted amiably with him for a few minutes before they parted ways. She turned a corner and was already searching for her place in the book again, when she had to stop rather abruptly so she wouldn't run straight into someone else.

This time it was Malfoy. And he looked like he'd been waiting, arms crossed and one shoulder against the wall.

"Eavesdropping, Malfoy?" she asked with as much sweetness as she could inject into her voice.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I know what you're doing, Granger. It's time to stop."

Hermione looked down at the volume in her hands. "But I _like_ reading."

He pushed away from the wall and took one step closer to her, so she had to hug her book to her chest if she didn't want to poke him in the belly with it. He didn't particularly look like he'd appreciate belly-poking right now. "Is that your game, then?" he asked her. "Trying to make me jealous in spite of our deal? I am very disappointed in you. You should know it won't work."

"I'm not trying to make you jealous."

"The hell you aren't."

"I _like_ Darius. We're friends."

"You're far more than friendly."

"Well..." She nervously tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and bit her lip. Perhaps she had overdone the friendliness a tiny bit. "Then perhaps that's the way it's going to go."

"You said you didn't want a boyfriend."

"True. I did say that."

"Are you changing your mind already?"

She sighed heavily. "No. I don't know. I'm not saying I'm trying to make things go that way, but is keeping an open mind such a terrible thing?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're fucked up. If you start something with him, you'll fuck that up too. You need to unfuck yourself before you can make anything work. That's the golden rule of fuck-ups."

"Oh, and I do that by... fucking... you?" The crude word tasted foreign in her mouth.

"Probably not. But it's a pleasant thing to do in the meantime, isn't it?"

 _Pleasant?_ How about world-shattering? Life-changing? And the next morning, soul-crushing? "Maybe I changed my mind about that."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "And maybe I told you that it's too late for that. I'm not like Dorky. You don't get to play me as easily."

She gaped. "Play you? When did I ever play you? Either of you?"

"You're leading both of us on. Me sexually and him emotionally."

She sputtered, unable to dignify that with any kind of coherent answer.

He smirked. "What's that then? Unable to refute the facts, are we?"

She snapped her mouth shut and took a deep breath. "You... Maybe. We did have a kind of-of an agreement. But not Darius."

"Of course not. I know I have all my female acquaintances wriggling in my lap, giggling."

"I bet you do," she muttered, causing him to raise an eyebrow. She felt her cheeks heat. Damn it. _Was_ she sending Darius the wrong message? "Like I said, I'm keeping an open mind," she repeated. "That's not leading on."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes and took a step closer, forcing her to take a step back. "You really are deluded, aren't you, Granger? You think your mind is open? It's not. You think you want his happily ever after? You don't."

"Yeah, and how do you know?" she asked. Not the best comeback ever, but his intensity was sapping all coherent thoughts from her body. That, and her nerve-endings hadn't got the memo that they were supposed to be fighting right now, but were tingling at the heat of his body and promise of his touch.

"You don't think I know you?" he silkily replied. "You don't think I can read you like you read that bloody book? I can tell that commitment frightens you. You didn't want to commit to Weasley, you didn't want to commit to your job, you're not committed to teaching... You can't even commit to a physical relationship that's only meant to last a few weeks. And suddenly I'm to believe you're willing to commit to a Squib who'd have you barefoot and pregnant before you could even blink twice for 'help'?"

"What's eating at you, Malfoy?" She'd hit the wall with her back, and was swiftly running out of options. She should go. She should really...

"You are," he whispered, and then his lips were on hers.

She heard the thud of the book hitting the floor, just as her eyes slid closed and her arms somehow circled his neck. A sharp pang of lust and longing shot through her lower belly. Damn it, but she had missed this more than she ought to. More than she could in any way justify to herself.

He deepened the kiss, pinning her more firmly against the wall, and she was helpless to do anything but follow his lead.

He groaned into her mouth. "What is this, Granger? Why are you doing this?" he murmured, leaving her mouth to trail his lips over her cheek and chin down to her neck.

Yes, why... She couldn't remember.

He grabbed the back of her thigh and hoisted her up, pressing between her legs. It felt delicious. It felt like she'd finally found that missing piece.

Her head felt back, and she opened her eyes just a sliver to see one of the torches lining the walls of the Hogwarts halls, and she suddenly realised where they were. Anyone could come across them. Darius could double back for something he'd forgotten. A student could walk by. And here she was, snogging and grinding Malfoy out in the open.

She shoved at him in spite of her every hormone and nerve-ending screaming at her to pull him closer instead, managing to get free, and then shakily retrieved her book.

Draco was silent for a moment, but as she was about to walk away, he finally said, "Why do you suddenly want to deny yourself?"

She stopped up, feeling like maybe she did owe him an answer. "You said yourself that it was a bad idea to begin with."

"I did. But you ignored that. Now the damage is already done."

"Oh?" She turned back, scowling at him. "So just because we did it once... or twice... we should just keep doing it, is that what you're saying?"

"Is this about Carys?"

The pinch of hurt and annoyance she felt confirmed it was at least partially about Carys, but of course she couldn't admit to that. "This is about me. What I want!"

"Oh, good." He sauntered up to her, invading her space again, and putting his lips to her ear, he whispered, "Then we have no problem." And before she could shake herself from the daze of her attraction to him and the meaning of his words, he had sauntered off.

***

A few days later, Hermione was giving her own mirror image the umpteenth talking-to of the day. It really was too bad that she couldn't stop acting like some hormonal schoolgirl around Malfoy. In the Great Hall, when she was pleasantly eating and talking to Darius, Neville or McGonagall, he would almost without fail sit down at her other side. He didn't try to engage her in conversation, though. No, that would be too simple. Instead he merely ate his meal in a manner that ensured far too many brushes of hands and far too prolonged pressure of thighs to be accidental. In the beginning, she had tried to ignore it, but she couldn't any longer. She simply couldn't. He might as well be brushing entirely different places, the way she reacted. It was ridiculous. Not to mention highly inappropriate.

Just a few minutes ago he'd done it again, and she had finally hissed at him to stop it, but all she got for her troubles was a heated glance that set her heart pounding and filled her mind with naughty images. He'd seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, because without a word, he'd discreetly taken her hand and slowly guided it below the table to--

She shook her head as the memory sent renewed excitement coursing through her. No! It was wrong. There had been a room full of children eating, for crying out loud! And her co-workers... not to mention her boss! Hundreds of people had been there, surrounding them, and if anyone had looked closely enough, they could have guessed what Hermione and Malfoy were about!

But... she'd been enthralled by the way he'd looked her straight in the eyes as he'd placed her hand right on the bulge in his robes, and without thinking she'd moved it, feeling the outline. His jaw had clenched, but he hadn't reacted in any other way, just kept staring at her, until she'd finally snapped out of it and jerked her hand away.

He'd leaned closer to her and had tersely said, "Tonight." And then he had walked out of there.

The problem was that she wasn't angry at his assumptions. She wasn't offended or disgusted at his actions. She was just excited. So very, very excited. She missed his touch, and the thought of him inside her, made her shiver and her sex clench in almost painful anticipation.

How was she going to say no?

Finally, after giving herself a long hard stare, she stood up straighter, brought her shoulders back and pushed her chest out. "Right, Hermione," she said. "We can play this the conventional way and lose, or we can think outside the box and win. Not much of a choice, is there?"

Her mirror image smiled, but she still looked nervous.

***

Hermione stared in astonishment at her watch. He hadn't come. After everything he'd done, after all the talks she'd given herself, from scoldings to pep-talks, and all the energy she'd spent fretting about tonight, he hadn't even bothered to show! The hand moved slightly, bringing the time almost at midnight. He knew she'd usually be asleep by now. What was this game he was suddenly playing?

Irritably, she put away the watch and set about cleaning up her desk before going to bed. She felt stupid for waiting up. And her thwarted lust made her want to march over to his room and kill him.

Only, if she did that, he'd know she cared. And she didn't care. Not as far as he was concerned, anyway.

She was just about to go wash up when a low knock sounded at her door. Her heart skipped a beat and a small thrill went through her at the sound, making her all the more angry. No. She wasn't going to answer the door. She was done. He'd had his chance.

"Hermione, I know you're in there," Malfoy said from the other side of the door. "I can hear you breathing."

Hermione snorted.

"I definitely heard that!" he said.

Just how thin were these doors? "Go away," she said as evenly as she could. "I need my sleep."

"I can tell you what you need more..."

"Won't happen, Malfoy."

"Let me guess, you're cross with me for being late. Don't worry. I'll make it up to you."

"Why would I be cross?"

"You are cross. You waited up for me, didn't you? Sat there, frowning at your watch, wondering if I was playing you..."

She tore open the door. "I did _not_ wait up for you!"

He pushed away from the doorjamb and smirked. "Got you to open the door."

Hermione flushed and looked away, but allowed him to push inside and close the door behind himself. "Malfoy..."

"Let's get one thing straight. You don't have to fear me, and I think you know that. So the only reason you should refuse to open the door is because you fear yourself."

"Didn't you tell me I _should_ fear you?"

"I did. And you ignored me as you are wont to do."

She decided to definitely ignore that statement. "So... Where have you been then?" She crossed her arms across her chest. Even if she didn’t fear him, she definitely feared his answer. She hated that she wanted him so much when he was just sleeping around any way he pleased.

He gave her a tired look. "Not where I wanted to be. Trust me."

That wasn't a real answer, but she couldn't help but ask, "And where would that be?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Fishing, Granger? You know where I wanted to be. Here. With you. On you. Inside you."

"Then why weren't you?"

"Had more pressing matters to attend to. I'd have sent a note if I'd known you'd cared..."

"I--" Hermione snapped her mouth shut. She could keep denying that she cared, which they both knew was a lie, or she could take back control. She squared her shoulders. "I wasn't sure if I wanted you to come tonight, but I was offended that you didn't show up when you’d said you would."

His eyebrows shot up. He'd clearly expected more blushing and stammering from her. She gritted her teeth. That wasn't who she wanted to be. 

"I'm sorry," he softly said, and then he was the one to sigh and look away. "But the one thing I can't promise you is to be dependable. Disappointing people is what I do best."

"So, what? You come around whenever you feel like it, and I'm supposed to be waiting here with open arms? I think that's your girlfriend's job, not mine."

Her own words brought about an unexpected pang in her chest, so she turned her back on him and went to fiddle with some papers on her desk. Damn it. Why had she already cleaned it up? She needed to look busy, so he wouldn't expect her to look at him.

"That's strangely passive of you, Granger. What's suddenly wrong with you knocking on _my_ door?"

"I don't know. Nothing, I suppose. I just don't like being treated like rubbish."

She felt his hands on her upper arms, before he spoke. "Rubbish?" 

He tried to turn her around, but she resisted, shaking him off and taking a step away before whirling on him. "Yes! Or have you already forgotten? Each time I've come to you, you have insulted me horribly. Both before and... and after." She took a deep breath. "I know that's who you are. I know that's how you _feel_. But if I'm going to do this, I'm going to need to do it with a man who wants me, who will show up when he says he will, and who will at the very least respect me in the bedroom!"

He seemed taken aback by that. He couldn't really be that clueless, could he? He seemed to be looking for words and then finally said, "Well... There's actually something to be said for _some_ disrespect in the--" He abruptly cut off as he had to duck the book she hurled at his face. He was only partially successful. "Hey, mind the books!"

She was actually too furious to care about tearing pages or scratching bindings. "That one was filled with nothing but drivel, as are you! Get out!"

"Now, look, Granger. I know it wasn't the most appropriate thing to say, but you took me by surprise!"

"Get. Out!" She grabbed for the nearest item and was about to hurl that too, but he was quicker and came at her, grabbing her wrist and pressing her against the wall. Fortunately she was too angry to become _very_ aroused. "Oh, is that how it's going to be, then?" she growled. "I make my wishes known and you overpower me physically? There's a word for that, you know." He stared down at her. "Merlin, what is this, Granger?" He raised the hand that wasn't holding her wrist and touched her cheek as if unsure what to make of her. "I think I really misjudged you," he then softly said. "I had no idea you even heard anything I said."

"What? You were just making sure I wouldn't fall madly in love with your irresistible self, is that it? I have to tell you, Malfoy, I'm sick of you deciding how I feel and how I'm supposed to feel."

"I'm not trying to--"

"You were the one that lost it when I might actually sleep over. _You_. I don't know exactly what horrors your immature little brain thought would emerge from that scenario."

"Hey, I don't think that--"

"...If you thought you'd wake up married to me or something. But here's some news for you: I don't want that, and even if I did, how would I force you? I can't even grasp the fact that a supposedly grown man doesn't have better reasoning skills than this!"

"Will you shut up!" He'd raised his voice and Hermione finally stopped ranting and blinked, unsure whether to get even angrier that he dared yell her in the face on top of restraining her. "Yes, you're right, I was fucking terrified," he hissed. "But not for the reasons you think. Do you honestly believe I find taking a nap more intimate than sex? That's insulting."

She raised her chin. "Good. You're due for some insults." Her eyes flickered as she caught the seriousness in his tone. "But just out of curiosity, why _were_ you afraid, then?"

He sighed. "Because you never believe any of my warnings. I thought it wouldn't have to be an issue, we could just do the deed and I could send you off, no harm done."

"And?" Nothing he'd said had made her any less confused.

He touched her cheek again. "I dozed off, Granger." He almost whispered the words.

"How is that terrifying? What happens when you sleep?"

"Sometimes I dream. Sometimes I act out those dreams. Sometimes they are nightmares."

"You thought you could hurt me? But that's absurd... Isn't it?"

He rested his forehead against hers. "I don't want to tell you this." He clenched his jaw. "But maybe, just maybe, it'll make you listen to my warnings."

"Tell me what?" Her anger was slowly melting away in spite of herself and she covered his hand on her cheek with her own.

He lifted his head slightly to look into her eyes. "I don't just think I could hurt you that way, I know it. Because I've done it before."

***

Hermione blinked, not sure she'd heard him right. "You... hurt someone?"

"Yes, that's what I said."

"Like... You hit them or hexed them?"

"Not to get graphical, but..." He paused. "No, let me get graphical. I need you to understand it. All of it. I was dreaming. In my mind, I was under attack. Silent men in robes and masks were closing in on me, and they would destroy everything, everyone, I held dear before my eyes before they finally finished with me. It's a common enough nightmare of mine. It doesn't take a genius to work out where it stems from. So I fought back. I caught hold of one of them, grabbed onto his neck, and I squeezed. And then I squeezed some more."

He watched Hermione, looking for a reaction, but she managed to keep her face neutral. She was horrified to hear the words coming out of his mouth, but she sensed that he would stop talking if she showed any reaction. It might be selfish, but she needed him to talk. She needed this glimpse into what made him who he was.

"I never let up," he continued, when she didn't seem sufficiently rattled. "I never would have. I wanted to kill that bastard more than I have ever wanted anything in my life and I was so far gone that nothing could call me back." He paused. "The only reason you're not looking at a convicted murderer is that somehow, she managed to get free. Somehow she fought me. Somehow her will to live managed to be greater than my desire to kill her."

"You didn't desire to kill _her_ ," Hermione couldn't help but interject.

"Ah, but my mind didn't know the difference. And she would've been the one dead for it, so what's the difference? Anyway, she fought me, and she got free. I lunged for her, tried to get her back under control, and she grabbed some dumb old miniature bust at hand and swung it at my head. That stopped me."

"Your memory is very vivid."

"I suppose that I'll have to confess that I don't actually remember much apart from the dream. Treatment and her testimony supplied the rest."

"Then what happened?"

"She ran for help. Stark naked and sobbing. I should probably mention that I didn't know this woman very well. I doubt she’ll trust another man in a bar any time soon."

"Oh." Hermione's heart broke for this strange woman who'd had this happen to her. "Was she all right?"

The small smile he supplied was filled with self-loathing. "What do you think? The damage to her neck was... Well... Fortunately magic can make many things go away. And where magic doesn't help, money does. She had the very best treatment and was generously compensated for her silence."

"And you?"

"You seriously worry about how I dealt with a well-deserved blow to my thick skull?"

"No, I mean... How did you feel about what happened? How did you deal with it? Were you all right?" She supposed she already knew the answer to that last question. Everything about him screamed, _No, I'm not all right._

He pushed away from her, his mouth turned down in a frown. "Who the fuck cares, Hermione? Again you're missing the point!"

She shook her head. "I'm not. I understand now. I'm sorry that I didn't take you as seriously as I should have before when you tried to warn me. I honestly thought you were just trying to scare me away."

His stance relaxed a fraction, but he remained tense. Angry. Frustrated. Haunted. "I suppose I was. I'll give you that."

"And more people than you know care. Okay, so you did something awful and you victimised that poor woman. But you didn't mean to. You couldn't control it. You were as much a victim as she was, and you _deserve_ to have your feelings about it validated. I don't know if she was able to forgive you or ever will be--" he snorted at that notion "--but you are allowed to forgive yourself."

"Your world really is a happy place, isn't it, Granger?"

"Sometimes. You're welcome to come live in it."

He snorted a half-laugh and shook his head. "In some ways you're about as dense as they come."

"And in other ways... So are you. And yet here we are."

He gave her a tired look. "Yes, here we are. So perhaps you should take a little while to think about this."

"Think about what?"

"The risks and whether they're worth it."

"I thought you didn't appreciate being played."

"I don't. But I can hardly accuse you of playing me if you decide you don't want to risk being strangled in your sleep."

"Draco..." She reached for him.

He caught her hand before she could touch him and moved it to her chest. "Think about it. Really think. Don't make up excuses or pretend it couldn't happen again. Be on your guard."

"Don't worry. I'll do my best to make you feel safe."

He frowned at her in bemusement. "Me feel safe? That's not--"

"I'll make sure you know that there is absolutely no way for you to harm me or anyone else so you can finally relax and smile a little."

"You're impossible."

She smiled. She knew she couldn’t save Malfoy from himself. The only one that could do that was… him. She also knew that he wasn’t just pretending to be dangerous, or even wanted to be. But the thing Neville had tried to warn her about was happening. She wanted to soothe Malfoy and make him feel better about himself and his life. She wanted to make him realise that he _could_ learn to heal. She wanted to show him that he was more than his past misdeeds.

And she knew this would probably come at no small cost to herself. She could lose her heart, her soul, her mind… her life. Was Draco Malfoy worth it? Most people would say no. Yet there was something deep within Hermione that wouldn’t stop whispering, _Yes_.

***

Malfoy had just left her then. He seemed to be completely serious about giving her time to reevaluate sleeping with him. Damn him. Because naturally with time to think, some of her doubts resurfaced.

The biggest doubt being, could she even make a difference? Wasn’t she just like every other woman that had overestimated her own influence or importance?

So Hermione did what she considered the rational thing. She started with the sex. Obviously she wasn't going to persuade her body to give up completely on such great sex, so she made plans to make that great sex work for her. And she did that as only she could - with a list.

Item one. She would not sleep over in his room, nor would he spend the entire night in hers. If he should fall asleep, she would stay awake and watch over him while he got his rest.

Item two. She would try not to nag him about forgiving himself, since that only seemed to agitate him, but she would try to be a safe haven for him, even when it got tough. She would listen to his deeds and his regrets, and she would not judge him.

Item three. She would try very, very hard to deal with her hang-ups about Draco being in another relationship. He did not need to deal with that and, honestly, it didn't infringe on her own needs as much as it did on her vanity. And perhaps a little on her self-esteem. If her feelings ended up hurt, that would be her own fault and she should endeavour not to let him know.

Item four. All that being said, she would not let him get away with any of his rubbish. She would not be a doormat to be treated any which way he pleased. She would also not tolerate him acting out against his own self-interest.

Hermione looked at her list and snorted at her own efforts. In many ways that list seemed to reduce Draco to someone who needed to be managed. "But doesn't he?" she muttered to herself, and then shook her head. Was she really the right one to manage him? It was probably Carys’ job. But then, Hermione could hardly go down to Hogsmeade with her tidy little list to discuss how to manage the woman’s boyfriend.

She tapped her quill against her paper. Although... Perhaps some kind of discussion with Carys was overdue. Avoiding the other witch only made Hermione feel like she was doing something underhanded by being with Malfoy. And she did want to be with Malfoy. At least for a little while.

But would Malfoy approve? Or would he tell her to stay out of his personal relationships?

Hermione huffed. This wasn't about _Malfoy's_ relationships, this was about _hers_ , and she needed to be certain that everything was fine or she wouldn't be able to carry on with it.

So this was how Hermione found herself sneaking out of the castle late on a week night, glancing about so she wouldn't get caught, and then scurrying along the darkened road. She knew the pub closed at midnight today, so she planned to hang around outside as the last patrons left, and then slip inside. It was a bit colder for that plan than she had thought, and so she didn't manage it quite as elegantly as she'd envisioned, but she did manage to rush in and head straight to the fire as Carys gaped at her new guest.

"Excuse me, Miss, but we're closed," Carys said, looking quite put out.

Hermione wondered if it was because of her lack of invitation or because of the things Malfoy had said that Carys had already inferred about them. "I know. I'm sorry," Hermione said, as the warmth melted some of the chill from her bones. "I just thought we might need to talk."

"Nothing to talk about." Carys looked uncharacteristically pinched.

"I..." Hermione dropped her outstretched hands, confused. "Did I do something wrong?"

"I just don't see why you'd come here when you've already got what you want, is all."

"Was he lying, then? About your relationship being open?" 

Carys gave her a long, assessing look. "Seems like we're on different pages here. Sit down, I'll get you a warm mead to stop those teeth from clattering."

Hermione gratefully sat down, and after bringing Hermione the warm, spicy drink, Carys sat down across from her. "So, what are _you_ talking about?" she then asked.

Hermione took a sip and then coughed. "Open relationships, being the other woman, if it's really all right and all that. I can't really ask Malfoy without him accusing me of being jealous."

Carys snorted. "Sounds like him. Likes to play everything close to the chest and deflects if you ask something that doesn't please him."

"Yeah, so... I just thought it might be better if we talked."

"So he really didn't tell you, then?"

"Tell me what?"

Carys gave her another long, hard look. "It's probably not for me to say if he's keeping it from you."

"Oh, now, that's just mean." 

Carys quirked an eyebrow and Hermione flushed. That _had_ sounded rather petulant and childish, but it had just slipped out.

"Why don't you simply ask him?"

Hermione scoffed at that idea. "You know I can't. He'll know I talked to you, and he wouldn't like that."

"And isn't that strange, you think? That a man in an open relationship doesn't want the women to talk to each other?"

"So you _are_ saying he lied?"

Carys pursed her lips and seemed to search for her words before she replied, "Did he lie? Almost certainly. But just not about what you think."

***

It was really late by the time Hermione managed to sneak back into the castle. She’d probably pay for it in the morning, but right now, for a time putting her relationship woes aside, she felt a level of excitement she hadn’t felt since she was very young. Even sneaking around with Malfoy lately hadn’t felt like an adventure in the same way.

Okay, so maybe she had no reason to be secretive now that she was back from her outing, but she wasn’t too old to pretend a little just for the fun of it.

She was doing her best (very poor) impression of a stealthy ninja, when she suddenly heard a sound and whirled around to see Malfoy watching her from the shadows, his eyebrows raised at her embarrassing antics.

She decided to pretend she hadn’t just been playing around like a kid and, cheeks flaming, brushed away a curl that had become stuck to her cheek before she asked, “What are you doing up so late, Malfoy?”

“I could ask you the same thing. In fact I would have, if I hadn’t become so… fascinated… but what exactly were you doing?”

“Walking.”

“Curious. I don’t recall seeing you walk quite like that before.”

Hermione cringed, her cheeks flaming even hotter. “All right, all right, you’ve had your fun. But what are _you_ doing here?”

He grinned. Merlin, did he look handsome with an expression like that on his face. Too bad it was so rare. “Couldn’t sleep. You? I mean, apart from the… not quite so obvious?”

“Couldn’t sleep either. Went out for a… walk.”

His eyebrows went up again, but he didn’t comment on her current style of walking. Instead his gaze flickered to where she had come from. “Outside? At this hour?”

“Yeah, so?” She felt a little defensive.

“So where did you go?”

“Just… around.”

“Just around? Outside? Here? After midnight? Merlin, Granger. Do you _want_ to mysteriously disappear”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Not really, no. And I know you know that too, and I don’t see you as much of a risk taker, so I wonder what you’re not telling me.”

“I take more risks than you think.”

“Plus you’re an awful liar. I wouldn’t make a career out of it if I were you.”

“Are you quite finished yet? Quite frankly, where I went is none of your business,” she snapped. She immediately regretted how harsh her tone sounded, but since the words were out, she wasn’t going to back down. It _wasn’t_ any of his business, and she wasn’t about to tell him, so she might as well be clear about that.

He narrowed his eyes at her and then at the dark behind her, glaring as if he expected someone else to emerge any second now.

Oh, now. _That_ couldn’t be what he thought, could it? The thought was mildly amusing.

“Well, since you’re back now,” he finally said. “How about I walk you back to your rooms.”

Now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “I’m quite confident I can manage from here without _mysteriously disappearing_.”

“Oh, I know you can.” He gave her a strained smile, suspicion still lurking in his eyes. “But I’m going anyway. We’re neighbours, remember?”

How could she forget? That was part of why she had such trouble sleeping lately. The knowledge kept her constantly on edge that she could get up and be in his bed before she’d even have time to say, “Sleeping with Draco Malfoy is a terrible idea and you’re a complete ninny for not letting it go.”

“Vaguely,” was however what she said, and the way his eyes burned into hers told her that not only was she not the only one hyper-aware of their proximity, but he wasn’t going to buy any flippant dismissals from her.

“All right then, let’s go.” He silently lead the way, and Hermione wondered what this new tension meant. Was it purely sexual—not that there would be anything wrong with that—or was he actually angry with her for whatever he imagined she’d been about tonight?

Well, if he had a problem, then it was _his_ problem. She was the one that had just talked to his cryptic girlfriend and had to try and work out just what exactly he was lying about.

 _Everything_ seemed about as good a bet as anything, except she knew he wasn’t lying when he was recounting his own bad deeds. So what did that leave? Everything good? But that made no sense either. Of course, she wasn’t about to put too much stock in things he said in bed. And she was very certain that he wanted her, even though he denied it half the time. But then, it wasn’t like she didn’t have her own doubts about sleeping with him. As much as she had decided to do this just a few days ago, she had struggled with the finer points of her decision ever since. Not because of the physical threat but because of the very real threat to her emotional well-being.

But his kisses felt so good.

Lost in thought, she let out a frustrated groan, and Draco turned with a quizzical look.

Her cheeks heated again. “I… just realised I’d forgotten something on my lesson plan.”

_Lying liar who lies._

And his look said, _badly_.

He opened his mouth to deliver a reply, when he suddenly became distracted by something, his head angling away from her.

Then she heard it too. Muffled sounds. It sounded like… her mouth dropped open. No, that most definitely couldn’t be. Without thinking, she moved in the direction of the sounds. There was an empty office on this floor with the door ajar, and the sounds were coming from in there. She was about to push it open, when Malfoy grabbed her and pulled her back. She was about to object, when he held up a finger in front of his lips, and then carefully gave the door a small push, so it opened wider.

There was no longer any mistaking the sounds as they were now coupled with the sight of two teenagers being _very_ intimate on the empty desk. Hermione drew in a breath to say something, anything, but Malfoy put his palm over her mouth. She glared at him, but he only shook his head lightly, and then gave the couple another assessing look, before he dragged her off.

“Excuse me, what exactly was that?” she hissed as he took her into the nearest room—as far as she could tell, it was some kind of a supply storage room—and quietly closed the door after them. “We can’t allow that to happen here!”

“We never saw anything.”

She stared at him, mouth agape. “Have you gone insane? Those are _children_?”

He now looked a little amused with her. “So you’re saying you had no urges when you were sixteen?”

“I’m saying I wasn’t mature enough to act on those urges.”

“No, but we were certainly mature enough to kill, weren’t we?” The bitterness was hard to miss.

“No… No, of course not. But you can’t compare the two.”

“I can and I will. They were both within an acceptable age range, it was consensual, and we both know that they won’t be able to get in trouble doing it here. Let’s just hope they take precautions if they do it elsewhere.”

“No, of course they won’t get in trouble if their _teachers_ , their _sole everyday parental figures_ let them get away with it.”

“Not that kind of trouble, love.”

“I know. I know! I just… very much disagree with this.”

“I had no idea you were such a prude.”

“Prude?! Now I’m a prude for not wanting children under my care to-to…” Her voice petered off as she couldn’t find a word she wanted to use for this.

“Make love? Have sex? Shag? Fuck?”

She shot him a withering look. “I think we both get the picture, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Doesn’t it feel at all uncomfortable for you to see something like that? I mean, they’re _children_.”

“They’re not, though.”

“They’re certainly not adults.”

“Those two will be legal adults in less than a year.”

“You noticed who it was?”

“But of course.”

“And it didn’t bother you to see them like that? At all?”

He sighed. “Not because of their age, no. And if it makes any difference in your surprisingly prudish mind, those two in particular are very much in love and have been for a while. Perhaps that’ll soothe your moral objections a bit.”

“No!” She pointed a finger at him. “No. You do not get to do that to me. You do not get to act like my concerns are ridiculous when you know damn well that just about anyone else would feel the same way.”

He was quiet for a little bit. “Then what do you suppose we do? Barge in there, humiliate them, send for their parents, traumatise them forever, and force them to go to unsafe places to do it?”

“No, of course not! I was thinking more along the lines of… Make them stop!”

Now he grinned. “Granger… that’s cute, but you and your big brain should know better. There is no stopping them. There never was.”

“Then what exactly do _you_ propose we do?”

“Leave the kids alone for now. And make sure they stay safe in the future. Mentally and physically. And make sure they know that whatever they tell Vera is confidential.”

“I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t heard it first hand. Draco Malfoy is a Free Loving Hippie!”

“A what?”

“Nothing.” She hugged herself. “Look, it’s not like I don’t understand intellectually. I actually do. Hormones, everything is so much more intense at that age, et cetera. I’m just… I didn’t think I’d ever be put in a position like this whereas you act like it happens to you every other day!”

“I simply remember being their age. Vividly.”

“We didn’t have time for those things at that age!”

For a moment he looked stricken, but then he lowered his eyes and when he looked back up it was gone. “Let’s just be happy that they do have time,” he said. “And let’s hope they’ll never forget.”

With that cryptic remark he left the room without making sure that she followed. On her way back, Hermione checked the office again, but the teenagers were gone.

She released a relieved breath. She honestly wasn’t sure what she’d have done if they’d still been there.

***

The next morning, Hermione was in the Great Hall, looking at her schedule. She was less than pleased. She had made the changes herself, of course, she had simply forgotten about them and the timing was, as you might say, impeccable. Since she had no classes this morning, she had decided to set the time aside to observe the other teachers. She’d thought it might be a good way to see other methods of teaching, watch the kids outside of her own classroom, and generally just learn something new.

However, she was of no mind to sit in on Malfoy’s class this morning. Perhaps she could skip it, or postpone it, or—

“Ready?” he breathed near her ear, making her jump.

“Umm…” was her eloquent reply.

He smirked. “What’s the matter, Granger? Did last night rattle you so badly you don’t want to see those kids again?”

She stared at him, admittedly a little horrified. “ _They_ will be in that class?”

“Of course. So, are you coming?”

She really had no choice but to follow unless she wanted him to laugh at her forever.

When they arrived at the classroom, she took a seat against the wall and took out her parchments, ready to make notes.

Malfoy clapped his hands for the kids’ attention. “Ignore her, I know I will.” He carelessly flicked his wand at the chalkboard, bringing up the notes for this lesson. “But first… Girls versus Boys!”

There was an excited muttering among the kids and Hermione blinked. What versus what?

“Girls!” Draco barked. “When was the Imperius Curse declared Unforgivable? Looking for three separate years.”

A few of the girls eagerly raised their hands and Malfoy picked one. “1771, 1981 and 199…8?”

“Correct. Boys! How do you get Ashwinder eggs?”

The boys looked at each other in confusion.

“Ah, but the Dark Arts that don’t reside in the question, reside in the answer.”

A scrawny boy hesitantly put up his hand and was picked. “You create a Fiendfyre?”

“Correct. And then what?”

“Uh… Nothing?”

“Also correct. You let it burn. Ashwinders will be created and leave eggs. Ashwinder eggs are, as your Potions Professor might already have told you, a common ingredient in love potions. So set the world on fire to set _your_ world on fire.” He grinned mischievously, half the kids giggled, and Hermione’s jaw dropped open.

This was a Malfoy she had _never_ seen before.

“Girls again. How many Horcruxes can a single person make?” A jolt went through Hermione. Talk of Horcruxes had always been severely taboo in her time.

“Seven, it is believed,” the girl he picked replied. “Although nobody is about to test that fact.”

“At least let’s hope as much. It was nasty enough the last time. Boys. What’s the differences between an Inferi and a Zombie?” He picked a boy.

“Trick question, sir. They’re the same!”

Immediately a few of the other boys groaned. Malfoy pursed his lips. “Wrong. Girls win. Boys get to write a 20 inch essay on the differences between Inferi and Zombies, and they will be the receptors of curses for the day.”

The boy who’d answered wrongly found himself pelted with balls of parchment, while some of the girls started musing aloud about who they’d like to curse and how.

Malfoy walked up to the boy who got the question wrong, who was now yawning. “Tired, are we?” he smoothly asked, then bent down so Hermione had to strain a little to hear him over everyone else shuffling over to the spell-casting area. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be out visiting empty offices at all hours then with your… girlfriend.” He shot a particular girl a glance, and the boy went crimson in the face, staring at Malfoy in horror. Malfoy straightened back up. “Well, go on, then. She’s looking to curse you. You’d better hope she’s happy with you or it might become a rather nasty experience.”

The boy fled to join his classmates and Malfoy sauntered over to Hermione.

“Well, that was…” she began, quite unable to finish her sentence.

He pursed his lips. “Come on, say it. I know it must be hard for you to acknowledge I have any teaching ability at all.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Adequate,” she then hissed.

“Ouch.” He didn’t look hurt as much as amused.

“However, I thought you were going to give that couple a free pass?”

“Hm?”

“The ones from last night. I overheard what you said to the boy.”

“Oh, that was mainly for my own amusement. But also to let them know to be a bit more careful when they go out. Wouldn’t want McGonagall to suffer a heart attack.”

“I doubt she’s that fragile.”

“As do I. But, really, they could’ve been more careful.”

Hermione shook her head. “All that aside, I really didn’t imagine that you could be so…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. Charming?”

His eyebrows shot up. “You know, Granger. You keep giving me compliments that sound more like insults. I’m not sure I appreciate it.”

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. It’s just. You’re usually so angry and gloomy and intense. But this seemed almost like you had fun with your students. You even made a joke!”

“No need to look so shocked, Granger. If you’ll recall, I did set up a competition for the students where the losers had to had curses thrown at them for forty minutes.”

“I know, but—”

“And the joke was nothing but a mnemonic gimmick.”

“A mnemonic…” Hermione stared at him. “You know what mnemonics are?”

“Really, Granger. You don’t have the patent on knowing things.”

They were interrupted by a scream that soon turned into sobbing. Malfoy frowned in the direction of the sound. “Miss Miller! Did I say you could _lift_ the curse again?”

“But Professor, he was in pain!”

“If he’s slow enough to be hit by your curse, he should at least be clever enough to find a way to get rid of it himself. Do it again and I’ll take points. Miss Halabi, why aren’t you cursing your opponent?”

The girl muttered something unintelligible.

Malfoy stalked over to the students and invaded the girl’s space. “What?”

She blushed and raised her head, stammering. “I-it just seems so aggressive. He hasn’t done anything. He isn’t even trying to cast any spells on me. He’s quite innocent.”

“No, he’s not. Today he’s a man, possibly a werewolf, with a physical advantage over you, coming at you and doing who knows what to you _unless you stop him first_. So let me see some curses, little lady. Your family won’t appreciate the alternative.”

“I don’t want to be an attacker!” the boy objected.

“You’re not, Mr Rowland. You’re defending yourself and possibly others against an established Dark Witch, whilst waiting for help to arrive. Don’t let her kill you.”

Meanwhile a flapping sound was getting stronger from the other side of the room. Malfoy frowned deeper and went to see what was happening. An unfortunate boy’s nose was ever expanding and as his nostrils were flaring, they were now flapping like really odd wings.

Malfoy’s frown turned into a look of delight. “Miss Jones, did you do this?”

“Yes, Professor,” the girl proudly proclaimed.

The boy made some gurgling sound that could’ve been a call for help as his head was thrown back and the ever expanding nose was beginning to take over the room.

“I suppose we should end this,” Malfoy said, looking for all the world as if this happened to him all the time. It probably did. He waved his wand and the nose began not exactly shrinking, but rather deflating. Malfoy tilted his head at the resulting mess. “Hmm. You should probably make your way to the Hospital Wing. Madam Vera will know what to do.”

The boy miserably folded up his nose in his arms and shuffled off.

Malfoy waited until the boy was gone then asked the girl, “A curse of your own device?”

She nodded.

“Five points for Slytherin.”

The girl grinned like she’d just won the House Cup all by herself.

Hermione felt her lips twitch in spite of herself.

***

All her apprehensions about being around Malfoy forgotten, Hermione happily kept an eye on him for the rest of the day. This was a topic of research she could get behind. Especially on those rare occasions when he was genuinely amused by something, oh Merlin, that smile!

And there was something about the way he interacted with the students as well. He’d always seemed cold and distant to her before, but now when she looked closer, she realised that he was stern, sometimes demanding, but not unkind.

It made something inside her soften. Something she probably should work harder to keep firmly in place.

At the end of the day she went to Malfoy’s office to discuss her findings. She was well aware that he would have no interest in discussing them and he might even be unbearably rude to her, but she decided to go anyway.

Malfoy didn’t seem surprised to see her. He did, however, seem a little surprised to see the rolls of parchment she was cradling in her arms.

“Is this your idea of foreplay, Granger? Because I might as well tell you, I’d probably fall asleep before we could do the deed.”

“Very funny, Malfoy. I thought you might want to know what I’ve learnt today.” She dumped her stack of scrolls on his desk.

He instantly looked a little wary. “You mean when you were lurking in the shadows, following me around?”

“I wasn’t trying to hide. Anyway, I learnt that I probably owe you an apology for some of the things I’ve said about you teaching before. You’re a good teacher. Possibly even a great one! I assumed that I would be better than you at it, but…” She made a ‘you know’ face.

“Buuuut?”

Oh, he was going to force her to say it, was he? Fine. He’d earned this one. “But I wasn’t. You’re the better teacher. Much better.”

“If you’re here for signed photographs, I’m afraid I’m fresh out.”

“I admit I had some reservations about some of your… methods… initially.”

He snorted at that. “You don’t say? You looked about as pinched as Mrs Pince for a while. I hate to say it, but it’s not your most attractive look.”

“But they work. And the students, they respect you. Before I thought they feared you and in a sense they do, but it’s more like they fear disappointing you.”

He nodded in agreement. “Because they know I do not take lightly to disappointment.”

“No, because they want you to like them. Whenever you reward one of them, they light up like a Christmas tree. Especially the girls.” She couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow at him.

“You exaggerate.”

“I do not. And that brings me to the next point.”

“Oh good, there are more points.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “You claim you’re a sexual deviant with no self control.”

“I have plenty of evidence to back that up, actually.”

“But when we came across those two last night, you showed no sexual interest in them.”

“I am being watched for things like that, remember?”

“You also showed no sexual interest in me, even though that would have been an easy outlet for you.”

“Easy?” he raised an eyebrow.

Hermione felt her cheeks heat up but she refused to take the bait. “You assessed the situation and chose to shield the children. Even today when you supposedly taunted that poor boy—”

“I didn’t supposedly do anything. You were there.”

“—it was a warning, to keep him safe from humiliation and censure, and to prevent him from choosing physically unsafe venues.”

“My, I do sound like a great bloke, don’t I?”

“And again with the curse-casting.”

“Mm, that was amusing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. But what you said to that reluctant girl hit home with me. You weren’t just teaching them to defend against the _Dark Arts_.”

“Werewolves are perfectly within the realm of dark arts.”

She leaned in over the table. “You know darkness that has nothing to do with magic, so you wanted to protect them against that too. Tell me that isn’t true. Tell me I’m making things up.”

He held her gaze. “You’re making things up.”

She shook her head and straightened, a knowing smirk on her face. “Say what you want, Malfoy. McGonagall said you were afforded this position because you _lived._ That may well be. But I think the reason you’re still here after two years is because you _protect_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Let's hope the next chapter is posted sooner. I already have a bunch written. But first I kinda promised to do two other things.
> 
> 1) I'm taking part in a fairy tale comp: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Once_Upon_a_Parchment. The fic (10k words or under) will be posted anonymously in the beginning of August. I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with as well!
> 
> 2) Some people are anxiously waiting for an update to CoCK. Since they've been just as sweet as you guys (and I do realise there's some overlap) I will get that chapter out as well. I have parts of it, so I hope it won't take... well... three years. XD
> 
> Until next time. <3


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